


The Mountie

by Lbilover



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Drama, Historical, Hurt/Comfort, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mounties (RCMP), Romance, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:51:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9400604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lbilover/pseuds/Lbilover
Summary: On the advice of his doctor, Elijah's parents reluctantly agree to send him to his Aunt Mary in western Canada for the summer. While there he meets a handsome Mountie named Sean Astin. Set in the early 1900s.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One of my very favorite books has always been 'Mrs. Mike' by Benedict and Nancy Freeman. Based on a real story, it's about a girl who is sent from Boston to Canada for her health and falls in love with a handsome RCMP Mountie named Mike Flannigan. As a pleurisy sufferer myself, I always sympathized with Kathy’s situation, and I’ve borrowed some elements of her story for this one. The idea of Sean as a Mountie was irresistible; hence this story. Please note that this is a work in progress!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the advice of his doctor, Elijah's parents reluctantly agree to send him to his Aunt Mary in western Canada for the summer.

Elijah was a sickly child: thin, pale and small for his age. He was plagued by lung problems from the time he was a baby, especially in Boston’s hot, humid summer months. Because of this he was never able to go to school, and he had no friends his own age. He relied mostly on the household servants in his parents’ Beacon Hill mansion for company.

He expanded his horizons through the magic of books, losing himself in tales of far-off places, although he would sometimes look wistfully out the window of his bedroom at the street and wish that he could join the other children chasing hoops or playing hopscotch or simply running along the sidewalk without having to stop every few feet to catch his breath.

His parents took him to see what must have been every doctor in Boston, but nothing they did helped. The only ray of hope they could offer was that Elijah’s pleurisy might improve as he got older, but as the years passed and Elijah approached adulthood, there was no sign of improvement. A particularly brutal heat spell the summer of his 16th year left Elijah completely bed-bound and struggling for every labored breath, and the doctors hovered anxiously and his parents gave each other frightened looks and wondered if they were going to lose their beloved only child.

Elijah rallied, as he always did, when autumn arrived, bringing with it cooler temperatures and lower humidity, and his parents breathed easier just as Elijah did. But they all knew that this was only a reprieve, and the autumn passed and winter gave way to spring and dread filled them as summer, and a flare-up of his pleurisy, loomed like a dark cloud on the horizon.

In desperation, they decided to take Elijah to see a lung specialist in New York City, a Dr. Hill who had been highly recommended to them. Traveling was difficult for Elijah, but under the circumstances his parents felt that they had no choice. The train ride quickly exhausted his small store of energy, but Elijah enjoyed it nevertheless, keeping his nose pressed to the window-glass so that he might not miss a single sight along the way. It was the first time he had ever left Boston.

“Elijah may not survive another summer,” Dr. Hill told them bluntly after he completed his examination. “You have to send him away for the sake of his health, not to mention his very life.”

“Send him away where?” asked Warren Wood. “To a sanitarium?”

“I won’t go, Father,” Elijah broke in fiercely. “I’d _rather_ die.” 

“Elijah! Such outbursts are rude and uncalled for,” his father reproved him.

But Elijah didn’t care. He was tired of being poked and prodded and treated like something less than human. He chafed at the constraints on his life as it was, even though he loved his parents and he knew they loved him. Bad enough to be an invalid at home; no way was he going to some institution where he’d eventually die of loneliness if the pleurisy didn’t kill him first. 

The doctor gave him a surprisingly sympathetic look. “No, not to a sanitarium, Elijah, but to a climate where the summers are cooler and less humid - somewhere in the north. A simple country life of wholesome food and clean fresh air should do wonders for your lungs.”

“We couldn’t possibly consider it, Doctor,” his mother objected, and Elijah’s heart sank. “Send our only child, my baby, away?”

“It’s that or send him to the afterlife,” the doctor said bluntly. “Is that what you want?”

His mother teared up. “Of course not. We’d do anything for Elijah.”

Warren put a supportive arm around his wife. “Deborah, we can’t simply dismiss Dr. Hill’s suggestion out of hand. If it means restoring Elijah's health and letting him return to us strong and well, then I think we’d better listen to him.”

“But where is Elijah to go?” 

“To your sister Mary in Canada.”

Deborah Wood’s jaw dropped in astonishment, but Elijah’s dropped even further. 

Aunt Mary was the black sheep of the family, rarely ever mentioned and then only in hushed tones as if she were dead. In fact, she might as well be dead as far as her family was concerned, for the daughter of a prominent Beacon Hill banker, a Boston Brahmin whose ancestors came over on the _Mayflower_ , didn’t run off to marry a man who ran a cattle ranch in the wilds of Canada. 

His aunt sent a yearly Christmas card with an accompanying letter, but it always disappeared as soon as it was delivered, and Elijah had no idea if his mother ever wrote back or if she burned the missives unread. But he’d often wondered about his aunt and especially about the place she lived, a place that had to be as different from Boston as chalk was from cheese. Excitement welled up inside Elijah; he hadn’t felt such a sense of anticipation in years. To see some of that wide world that he’d read about and imagined would be a gift beyond his wildest dreams.

“I suppose I might write to Mary and see if she and Ben would be willing to have Elijah to stay for the summer,” his mother said, sounding very reluctant. “But Warren, the train trip will be too much for him.”

“No it won’t, Mother,” Elijah quickly interjected. _Oh please_ , he wanted to beg her, _please let me go_. 

Until this moment, with freedom beckoning, he hadn’t realized how much like a bird in a cage he felt, how badly he wanted to stretch his wings and soar. Even if he couldn’t soar far or for long, he had to know how it felt to be free. 

“There are things Elijah can do to build up his strength before the journey,” said Dr. Hill. “I’ll write down a list for you.”

“Well in that case...” Deborah said hesitantly at the same time as her husband said, “Then it’s settled. We’ll write to Elijah’s aunt as soon as we get back to Boston. Thank you, Dr. Hill.” 

Elijah schooled his face to calm, but he could have danced for joy. He was going to Canada.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elijah travels to Calgary, but barely survives the journey. At its end, he has a memorable encounter.

Ten days into the eighteen day journey to Calgary, Elijah began to fear that his mother had been right, and he might not survive it. The train trip to New York City to see Dr. Hill had been by comparison a stroll in the park. 

It had begun pleasantly enough, with the Canadian Pacific Railway steam train chugging slowly northward through Vermont and into Canada amid countryside burgeoning with early spring color. The excitement of this grand adventure upon which he was embarking lent Elijah strength. He got out at each of the frequent stops to stretch his legs and wandered along the platform, taking in the sights and reveling in his new-found freedom. 

Though he supposed it was disloyal even to think it, in truth, he was relieved to be away from his parents, from his father’s sometimes ill-concealed disappointment in his weakling son and from his mother’s suffocating over protectiveness. He was seventeen now and it was time for him to begin forging his own life. At the station in Boston, his mother had clung to him, weeping, and Elijah had feared that at the last second he would be forbidden to go. A wild urge to tear himself from her embrace and bolt had swept through him, but finally she had reluctantly released him.

“Mother, I’ll be home again in a few months,” he’d said, but there was no consoling her. His last glimpse of her as the train pulled away was of her sobbing into a lace-trimmed handkerchief as his father held her. He felt a pang then for her grief, but also wished that for once she might have shown some strength and been brave. 

The porter for Elijah’s sleeper car had been handsomely tipped by Warren Wood to keep an eye out for his son, and that ensured that Elijah was well-supplied with the best food and the best accommodation available. 

Accustomed to solitude, he was shy of his fellow travelers and kept mostly to himself. But he was curious about them and wondered why they were on the train and where they were going and invented stories to amuse himself as the hours passed.

His breathing bothered him little; the occasional sharp shooting pains under his breastbone were easily ignored. He was intimately familiar with the gradations of his pleurisy, and the breathing exercises that Dr. Hill had written down for him and that he’d performed faithfully every day, had had a positive effect.

“Your lungs need to learn how to work again,” Dr. Hill had said. “These exercises will help, but fresh air and outdoor activity will help even more.” 

Elijah slept well in his tidy curtained berth, lulled by the rattle and sway of the train, but each night before he shut off the gas light and settled down, he took out the letter his Aunt Mary had written to him and re-read it. It was creased and growing worn with so much handling, but his aunt’s decisive handwriting in black ink was easy to read.

_Dear Elijah,_

_You could have knocked me over with a feather when Sis wrote and asked if you could come for a visit. I thought Hell would freeze over before I’d be allowed to meet my only nephew. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are coming, and how much Ben and I are looking forward to your arrival._

_Sis has told me about your lung problems and that the specialist thinks a change of climate will do you good. There are many things I miss about Boston, but not the summers. I well remember how the humidity wore on a person and the heat radiated from the cobblestones. We used to joke you could fry an egg on them. It’s not like that in Calgary. The days can be hot but they’re dry, and the nights are always cool._

_We’ll have your room all ready for you - Ben is going to give it a fresh coat of whitewash - and we both hope you’ll be happy here. We’ll do everything we can to make you comfortable and welcome, I promise._

_Ben and I have never been blessed with children, so having a youngster around the place is like a dream come true for us. Ben is already planning to teach you how to ride and fish, and as for me, I’m a fair cook if I do say so myself, and I’m looking forward to fattening you up. From the photographs Sis has sent me, I can tell you’re in need of it._

_But I write that half in jest. You’ve grown into a very handsome young man, Elijah, and I expect you’ll turn some heads here. So best be prepared._

_Well, I don’t want to rattle on like I do to Sis when I write her. After all, I’ll be seeing you soon. Ben and I will be at the station to meet you, and I can give you the hug in person that I’m sending with this letter._

_All my love,_

_Aunt Mary_

After reading the letter through, Elijah would carefully fold it and put it away, then turn out the light and compose himself for sleep. But he never fell asleep immediately. Instead, he’d lie there with his head pillowed on his arm, staring up at the top of his berth and thinking about what his aunt had written.

One mystery at least was solved. His mother _had_ replied to Aunt Mary’s letters, even sent her photographs of Elijah. This discovery made him both glad and sad. Glad that she hadn’t lost contact with her only sister, and sad that she had never shared the letters with Elijah, for he knew so little about the woman with whom he was going to spend the summer, or her husband, or their life in Calgary. He supposed that his father had forbidden his mother to share them. Warren Wood’s word was law in their house.

 _You’ve grown into a very handsome young man, Elijah, and I expect you’ll turn some heads here. So best be prepared._

A very handsome young man? Aunt Mary was simply being kind. What heads could he turn, someone as pale, sickly and undersized as he was? But there was no doubting that her comment spurred Elijah’s burning curiosity about an element of life from which he had thus far been barred: sex. 

Most boys of his age and station had already experienced that mysterious rite of passage. Their fathers arranged discreet liaisons with prostitutes to initiate them. He’d overheard several boys bragging to each other about their sexual encounters at a garden party his mother had hosted. One had even claimed to have a mistress, a woman twice his age who taught him, as he put it, ‘all sorts of tricks’.

He’d come to believe that he was different in more ways than just being pale, sickly and undersized. A vague distaste filled him at the thought of doing whatever it was those other boys had done with their prostitutes. He didn’t know what he wanted, but it wasn’t that. 

Maybe he’d spent too much time reading stories of chivalry, of King Arthur and his knights, but as he lay in his berth in the darkness while the steam train rattled on through the night, Elijah dreamed of a love that was not sordid or base, but beautiful and ennobled. He never quite admitted to himself, though, that in his dreams what he imagined was not Guinevere, but Lancelot.

~*~

In Sudbury, Ontario, Elijah had to change trains, and it was then that the journey began to take a toll on him. 

There was no well-tipped porter to see to his welfare from that time on, and the weather turned sharply colder as they journeyed west along the Great Lakes, where a ferocious wind blew and snow squalls battered the train so that it swayed sickeningly.

The cars were poorly heated, and as a consequence Elijah was constantly chilled. His mother had packed for him in the belief that he’d been traveling in increasingly warmer spring weather, so the clothes he had were inadequate and he took to huddling in his blankets day and night. The food was mostly unpalatable and often inedible - watery soups, scorched meats, undercooked potatoes and stale breads. He’d had no idea how spoiled he was by the excellent cook his parents employed. 

At least there was always hot coffee, however bitter or gritty, and it was on this that Elijah chiefly survived, for with every passing day his small reserve of strength waned. His pleurisy flared up so that every breath was an effort, as if he were breathing water. His appetite gradually vanished until he found it nearly impossible to choke down any food, though he tried. A grinding nausea afflicted him, and his head throbbed and his very bones ached from the endless hours of sitting. 

He never complained, even after stumbling to the wash room at the far end of the car for the dozenth time to heave into the toilet. He’d learned long ago that complaining only upset his mother and disappointed his father. 

But his sufferings didn’t go unnoticed, and he was the recipient of many small kindnesses from the other occupants of the car, from an extra wool blanket and a cup of hot tea here to a helping hand in making up his berth at night and a hot brick to warm his feet there. Though he was too ill and exhausted to do more than stammer a faint ‘thank-you’, each kindness was like a small, flickering flame that warmed him inside. 

The further west they traveled, the more the landscape changed, turning from forest and lake to vast wind-swept plains that stretched as far as Elijah could see. It looked utterly remote and strange to his eyes, and he found himself missing Boston, and longing for a glimpse of the city’s tall buildings and the streets and shops crowded with people. He missed his mother, and no longer felt excited and adventuresome, only lonely and so very, very weary. 

When they stopped in Winnipeg and Regina, both thriving, bustling cities, he dragged himself outside but in the end had only enough energy to sit on a bench and watch the comings and goings. The people were as different as the landscape. Here were no business-suited bankers, but cowboys in denim and chaps and fleece-lined coats and boots with spurs that jangled as they walked, and in Regina there were Mounties, too: trim, straight and proud in their Stetsons and red coats and black breeches and tall brown leather boots. 

It gave Elijah a thrill to see the Mounties, for he and his mother had read an article about them in the Boston Globe, and the claim that a Mountie ‘always got his man'. They were like modern day members of Arthur’s Round Table, Elijah had decided: loyal, brave, determined, incorruptible. He watched them admiringly, and as he reboarded the train, wished that he might possess one fraction of their strength.

A week out from Calgary, a storm hit, a massive blizzard that slowed the train to a crawl. Elijah scraped away the ice that had accumulated on the inside of the window, and peered out into an impenetrable wall of white. It was terrifying. He’d never seen such a snowstorm in his life, and the porter told them that it was one of the worst late season blizzards he’d seen in ten years of working on the Canadian Pacific.

The train finally came to a complete stop, the tracks impassable from the snow.

The conductor, enveloped in a great buffalo hide coat, came through the cars. He was a gruff, red-faced man whom Elijah had spoken with a handful of times since leaving Sudbury. 

“I need every able-bodied man to help dig out the train,” he announced. “We’ve hit a drift, a big one.”

With determination, Elijah struggled to his feet, but was pushed gently back down into his seat by the conductor.

“You stay put, lad,” he said, not unkindly, and squeezed Elijah’s shoulder. “I appreciate your willingness, but I’ve no mind to hand over a corpse to your relations when we get to Calgary.”

So Elijah stayed put, though he burned with humiliation as he watched the other men bundle up and follow the conductor out of the car. Not for the first time he wondered bitterly if mightn’t be better if he were a corpse, rather than a useless figure of fun.

~*~

The final days of Elijah’s journey passed in a hazy blur of pain. The snow ended and the sun came out, and the dazzle of it on the pristine blanket of pure white was an agony to his eyes. He kept the shade on his window down, but even the dimmest light hurt, jabbing his skull like a knife. He breathed as shallowly as possible, to minimize the pain from his inflamed lungs, and as a consequence he felt constantly light-headed. 

By the time the train finally pulled into the station in Calgary, Elijah’s only wish was to curl up in a ball and die. How had he ever believed he had the strength to leave home? Mother had been right all along. He was ashamed that Aunt Mary and Uncle Ben would see him this way, see how weak and unfit he was. They would surely regret ever having agreed to him coming to stay.

Elijah followed after the porter carrying his trunk and disembarked from the train. He stood there on the platform, his legs shaky as a newborn foal’s, and a rush of dizziness swept over him. Only an effort of sheer will kept him on his feet. He was utterly spent.

“Elijah!” A voice called his name, a woman’s voice.

He turned toward the sound, though his vision was so blurred that he could barely make out the figure hurrying toward him. 

“Oh Elijah, I am so happy to see you. My dear boy, we were so worried when the blizzard hit and your train was delayed.” The next instant Elijah was enveloped in Aunt Mary’s warm, soft embrace. She held him for a long moment, then stepped back. “Let me look at you,” she said, gathering his hands into hers then exclaimed, “Mercy, but your hands are like ice.”

Elijah tried to speak, but he couldn’t. His breath caught on a vicious stab of pain beneath his breastbone. Blackness started gathering at the fringes of his sight. “I... I,” he managed to push out, wanting to apologize, but the blackness was spreading.

“Sean, come quickly,” his aunt’s voice said, sharp now with fear. “I think Elijah’s about to faint.”

As he sagged, knees buckling, a pair of strong arms swept him effortlessly up so that he was held securely against a hard-muscled chest. Eyes filled with concern stared down at him from beneath the brim of a Stetson. They were the most beautiful eyes Elijah had ever seen: clear green with flecks of amber, like autumn leaves floating on a translucent pond. He felt a jolt of instant recognition as he looked into them.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, or tried to, and then all was darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elijah wakens to a different world and meets his Aunt Mary, in whom he discovers a kindred spirit.

Elijah was no stranger to waking up weak and confused after an illness, but the familiar signposts he used to orient himself - the Burne-Jones painting of King Arthur and his knights, the rose and thistle William Morris wallpaper, the ornately carved oak mantelpiece and the gilded clock atop it - were not in evidence when he opened his eyes. 

Instead he saw plain whitewashed walls adorned by a framed sampler and a pair of steel engravings of cattle, a sturdy pine dresser with a white ceramic basin and ewer atop it, and a square window covered by blue-checked dimity curtains. 

A vague recollection of someone laying him in a bed, of a woman’s voice issuing brisk orders, returned, and then with a rush, it all came back to him: the exhausting train journey to Calgary, the blizzard, his humiliating inability to help with the digging out, and then the even greater humiliation of fainting in front of his aunt and into the arms of a total stranger. 

The stranger. A breathless sensation unrelated to his pleurisy swept over Elijah as he relived that moment when he’d looked into a pair of green, green eyes and felt a jolt of recognition, as if the man who held him was not a stranger at all... Sean - he was pretty sure Aunt Mary had called him ‘Sean’. Who was he, Elijah wondered. Did he work for Elijah’s uncle? If so, then maybe he would see him soon, and he could thank him for his kindness. A shy flutter of pleasure warmed the pit of Elijah’s stomach at the thought of meeting Sean again.

But there was no hope of that if he was malingering in bed. 

With determination Elijah pushed himself up into a sitting position. He tested his lungs, inhaling deeply several times; it wasn’t until they were almost fully expanded that he felt the familiar catch and stab of pain. Relieved that the inflammation was minimal, he threw back the colorful striped wool blanket that covered him and swung his legs around until he was sitting sideways on the mattress. He rested a moment, gathering his strength, then he set his feet on the wide-planked pine floorboards and stood. 

His head swam, but that was no novelty, and he knew the sensation would pass. Indeed, within a few seconds the room righted itself around him, and he padded barefoot to the window. He was wearing red flannel pajamas that did not belong to him and clearly had been made for a much larger man; the sleeves hung down over his hands and the hems of the legs pooled around his feet. But his own fine cotton pajamas would not have been nearly so warm.

The overlong sleeve fell back as Elijah raised his hand and pulled the curtain aside. A low gasp escaped his lips, and he stared and stared in wonder. The journey from the train station to the ranch was a complete blank to him, unconscious as he’d been, and so his first look now left him stunned. It wasn’t the corrals of horses or the log bunkhouse he could see across a wide dirt yard partially covered in snow and ice. It wasn’t the hills dotted with cattle. It was the distant mountains, white-capped and majestic, that stood framed against a flawless blue sky. The Rocky Mountains - he knew that from the map of Canada he and his mother had studied before Elijah left for Calgary, but knowing and seeing were two completely different things.

There were mountains in New England, but nothing like these. They spoke to something deep inside Elijah and his spirit yearned toward them.

How long he stood there, the curtain clenched in his hand while he feasted on the magnificent view and wondered how far off the mountains were and if it would be possible to go there, right to the very base of them, he had no idea. 

It wasn’t until a voice said from behind him, “Well, now this is a sight for sore eyes!” that he came back to himself.

With a guilty start, Elijah turned around. “I’m sorry, Aunt Mary,” he began, and then stared in wonder again, but of a very different sort. His aunt was wearing pants! Dark blue denim jeans such as cowboys wore, cinched at her waist with a tooled brown leather belt. Cowboy boots, suspenders and a red and black plaid flannel shirt completed her outfit.

Aunt Mary saw where Elijah’s wide eyes were focused, and she chuckled. “I gather you’ve never seen a woman in pants before.”

Elijah blushed. “No, I haven’t,” he said, hastily raising his gaze from her legs. “I apologize, Aunt Mary. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

In reply, his aunt folded her arms on her chest and considered Elijah, and he took advantage of the opportunity to get his first good look at Mary Kelly, the aunt who had only ever been a name to him, until now. 

Other than her slightly prominent pale blue eyes, Aunt Mary little resembled his mother, Elijah thought. She was tall - a couple inches taller than he was and a good head taller than his mother- and built on queenly lines, while his mother was petite and fine-boned, like he was. Her hair was a rich auburn, struck through with silver strands, not blond like his mother’s. But to Elijah’s mind, the greatest difference lay in her clear, straightforward gaze. He couldn’t recall his mother ever looking at anyone in such a fashion.

Finally, Aunt Mary said, “That’s twice now you’ve apologized to me, Elijah. The second apology is understandable, if unnecessary, but I confess I’m baffled by the first one.” Her voice was deep and sonorous, with a hint of amusement warming it. She had retained a trace of her Boston accent, but nothing like to what Elijah was used to hearing.

“I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed without your permission,” Elijah explained. His mother would have been horrified and clucked around him, herding him back to lie down and scolding him for overdoing things.

“You’ve slept for nearly three days straight. If you’re not sick and tired of being chained to a bed, you ought to be.” 

“Three _days_?” Elijah was horrified. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.” 

At that Aunt Mary laughed and came and wrapped him in a warm hug as she had at the train station. She smelled of a floral scent, similar to one Elijah’s mother wore, and a sudden, fierce longing for his mother made it difficult for Elijah not to cling to her. But he wasn’t a child any longer, he reminded himself, and resisted the urge.

When she released him, his aunt was no longer laughing. “From what Sis wrote, you’ve had trouble with pleurisy ever since you were little.”

Elijah grimaced. He hated being reminded of it. He would give anything to be rid of the ailment that had defined his existence for so long. “Yeah.”

“Then I expect you know better than I do when you’re fit to be up and around. You’re seventeen, and old enough to make your own decisions.” She smiled at him. “We have no intention of being your jailers, Elijah.”

Elijah was dumbfounded. It was as if Aunt Mary had read his mind and, wonder of wonders, agreed. He couldn’t remember _ever_ being treated as an adult by anyone.

“But I also expect you to use the sense God gave you,” she added more seriously. “If you’re tired, you rest. If you’re hurting, you let me or Ben know. Deal?”

“Deal,” Elijah replied. His heart swelled almost painfully with a sense of gratitude. Aunt Mary’s eyes held sympathy, as if she _understood_ , in a way no one else ever had, how constricted his life had been and how desperately he longed for freedom. Oh, he wanted to ask her a million questions: about her childhood and about his mother and his grandparents and why she’d run off with Ben Kelly, for starters. 

“Good.” Her smile blossomed again. “We want you to be happy here, Elijah.”

“I’m going to be. I just know it,” Elijah said, and smiled back, a wide smile that came from the fullness in his heart.

For a long moment, Aunt Mary simply looked at him. Then she lightly touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “I was right,” she said. “The photos Sis sent _didn’t_ do you justice. You’ve been blessed with the best of both your mother’s and your father’s looks. My word,” she shook her head, “those _eyes_ of yours...” 

Elijah flushed. Compliments had a tendency to do that to him; he was so used to people looking down on him for being small, pale and weak.

“Now, let’s move on to more practical matters,” his aunt said prosaically. “You’ll need new clothes, Elijah. This isn’t Boston, and what you’ve brought with you simply won’t do on a ranch. We’ll go into town in a couple days for some shopping - buy you jeans and boots, for starters. But for now you’ll have to make do. You’ll find everything in the dresser, but rearrange it to suit yourself. I didn’t unpack your books. I figured you’d prefer to do that yourself. If you’re anything like me, you’re particular about how your books are arranged. Drives Ben crazy when I scold him for putting one back in the wrong place.” 

Elijah exchanged another smile with her, this time as if they were conspirators. “Thanks, Aunt Mary. I _would_ prefer to do that myself.”

“I thought as much.” She gave a nod of satisfaction. Elijah thought she seemed pleased that they shared this small quirk in common. 

His stomach gave a sudden, embarrassing rumble, and Elijah realized he was famished.

“Hungry?” Aunt Mary asked sympathetically.

“Very,” Elijah admitted.

“I can’t say I’m surprised. All I’ve been able to get into you since you’ve been here is broth. Do you feel up to dressing and joining us for supper, or would you rather I brought you something on a tray?” 

“I’ll join you,” Elijah said with such feeling that Aunt Mary chuckled. Not only was he anxious to prove that he was fit to be out of bed, but he was eager to meet Uncle Ben and see the ranch. And maybe even Sean?

“All right then. The bathroom’s down the hall to your right. When you’ve washed up and dressed, come along to the kitchen. You can help with setting the table.”

Elijah was usually never allowed to lift a finger to do anything at home. Even such a small chore as setting the table made him feel necessary. It was a good feeling. “That will be great.”

“I’ll see you shortly then.” She gave him another hug. “Oh, I _am_ glad to have you here, Elijah,” she said, and there was no mistaking the genuineness of her words.

“Aunt Mary?” Elijah quickly said before she could leave.

“Yes?”

“Was there someone at the train station with you? A man?” He forced his tone to be casual, but it was difficult. His burning curiosity about the green-eyed stranger was eating him up inside. 

“That was Sean,” his aunt replied. “Your uncle wasn’t able to go to the station - too much to do on the ranch after the blizzard - so Sean went with me.” Her expression grew somber. “That snowstorm hit us bad, Elijah. We lost a fair number of cattle, and others needed vetting.”

“I’m sorry,” Elijah said. He’d seen evidence of the toll the storm took on the cows with his own eyes, when he’d looked out the train window. It wasn’t a sight he’d soon forget, their frozen bodies pushed up against barbed wire fences.

Aunt Mary sighed. “Cattle ranching is a hard business, and the winters always take a toll on the herds. But the ice will be breaking up on the rivers soon - you’ll hear it - and the spring Chinook will melt the last of the snow and the cows will be calving new life to replace the old. That’ll be work of another kind: the best.” 

“Does Sean work on the ranch?” His heart sped up a little as he waited for her answer.

“Heavens no, Sean’s not a ranch hand. Not that Ben wouldn’t hire him in a second - he can rope a steer better than anyone on the place next to Ben. But he’s a Mountie: Sergeant Sean Astin of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.”

“Oh, a Mountie.” Elijah was torn between disappointment that Sean wasn’t one of the hands, and thus living on the ranch, and a crazy jubilation that the man who’d caught him in his arms was one of those loyal and brave modern-day knights he’d admired in Regina and read about with his mother.

“Yes, a Mountie,” Aunt Mary said, “and among the very best. He’s a good friend to me and Ben, and I wish we saw more of him. But he only comes into town every few weeks to pick up the mail and supplies. He always makes it a point to stop by for a visit, of course, but it’s never long enough.” 

Hoping he wasn’t asking too many questions and being a nuisance, Elijah said, “Where does he live then? Is it far?” 

Aunt Mary pointed out the window. “See those mountains? That’s where Sean lives, in the foothills. Well, I’d best get to my cooking. The men will be in soon and they won’t want to be waiting for their grub. Makes them cranky.”

She went off, but Elijah didn’t immediately move. Instead, he stared out the window at the distant mountains toward which his spirit yearned, and wondered when Sergeant Sean Astin of the Royal North-West Mounted Police might come to town again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elijah helps Aunt Mary with the chores and learns more about her past and how she met Uncle Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The currant story that Aunt Mary tells Elijah is taken from 'Mrs. Mike'. The punch line was too wonderful not to borrow. :) Bits and bobs from 'Mrs. Mike' will appear, but I am trying not to follow the plot of that book too closely, only use it as a jumping off point.

After washing and changing, Elijah made his way to the kitchen, easily found by following his nose. There he discovered Aunt Mary standing at a large cast iron stove and keeping watch over several steaming pots. Though a fierce wind rattled the wooden shutters outside, it was warm inside. It was also redolent with the scent of roasting chicken, among other things, and his stomach gave another demanding rumble.

As he stood just inside the door, taking everything in, his aunt, looking in truth a little incongruous wearing a flowered apron over her flannel shirt and jeans, opened the oven door and bent to remove a tray lined with golden-brown biscuits. Holding the tray in one oven-mitted hand, she picked up a basket lined with blue-checked cloth and with a practiced motion tilted the tray so that the biscuits slid neatly into it.

“Set this on the table, please, Elijah,” she said, thus proving she had eyes in the back of her head. Somehow Elijah wasn’t surprised.

Elijah hurried over to take the basket. His mouth started watering at the smell that reached his nostrils.

“Help yourself to a biscuit if you want,” Aunt Mary added, as if reading minds was also part of her repertoire.

He didn’t need telling twice. He couldn’t remember ever being so famished. He set the basket down in the middle of the table and selected a biscuit from the top. It was so hot that he had to toss it gingerly from palm to palm a few times, but when it was cool enough to handle, he tore it in two. Wisps of steam escaped the fluffy white interior and the first bite had him almost moaning with pleasure. ‘A fair cook’, his aunt had called herself. That was an understatement.

“This is the best thing I ever ate,” Elijah pronounced, speaking with his mouth full, which would have called a scold down on his head from his mother.

“Why, thank you, Elijah.” She looked pleased. “I couldn’t cook a lick when I married Ben, you know. Lord, the disasters I was responsible for. You have no idea. That man is a saint for not sending me right back to Boston.”

Devouring the rest of the biscuit, which practically melted on his tongue, Elijah found that impossible to believe. He could have eaten the entire basket-full, easily enough, but he resisted the temptation. Pulling a fine linen handkerchief from his pocket, he carefully cleaned the buttery crumbs from his fingers. “If you tell me where to find everything, I’ll set the table,” he said, anxious to be useful - for what seemed like the first time in his life.

“The plates and cutlery are in the sideboard,” Aunt Mary said. “Take out enough for twelve.” Then she added, “One fork and knife per person will do, Elijah. We don’t stand on ceremony here.”

Elijah went to the sideboard and stacked a dozen plates - sturdy no-nonsense cobalt china, nothing like the delicate hand-painted porcelain they ate from at home - and carried them to the table. He returned to fetch the cutlery and then set to work, arranging everything with care on a rather battered but well-scrubbed rectangular oak table that had a motley assortment of ladder back chairs around it. At home, they had a formal dining room and a breakfast room; only the servants ate in the kitchen, and his parents frowned on Elijah ‘mixing with the hired help’, as they put it, even though he’d often thought that the hired help were his only friends.

He wondered now how much of his parents’ attitude was fueled by what had happened with Aunt Mary, by fears that Elijah might somehow become ‘corrupted’ - as he’d heard his grandfather put it - too. The many questions he had came back in a rush, but he feared to be thought rude or intrusive, so he held his tongue.

“I well remember one day, a couple months after Ben and I were married,” Aunt Mary said, taking a second batch of biscuits from the oven, “and I baked him a currant pie. I can’t tell you how proud I was of that pie. The dough came out perfectly, it baked to a tee, and it smelled like heaven. I couldn’t wait for him to try it.” She paused, seeming lost in memories.

“What happened?” Elijah prompted.

“I dished it up, pleased as punch, and waited for Ben to take a bite. He did, and oh, the look that passed over his face. But the dear man didn’t say a word, just kept right on eating. It wasn’t until I tried a bite myself that I discovered the currants were hard as pebbles. It’s a wonder he didn’t break his teeth on them.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes. I tried to pretend it tasted just fine, but I couldn’t swallow that mouthful of pie for anything. So I held it in my mouth, thinking I’d wait until Ben got up to spit the mess out, but he didn’t get up. He looked at me and said, ‘Mary, you go ahead and spit that out, and next time make sure to cook the currants first.”

Elijah tried, and failed, not to laugh at the mental image his aunt’s words conjured up. It hurt, like laughing usually did, but he didn’t mind because it was a good hurting.

Aunt Mary laughed, too. “I knew right then and there that marrying Ben Kelly was the wisest decision I’d ever made. I’ve never changed my mind, either.”

Here was an opening to ask her about how she’d met his uncle, but before he could a commotion of voices arose.

“Ah, there’s your uncle and the men now.”

Elijah nervously wiped his palms on the legs of his tweed trousers. Crowds of people intimidated him, and he was well aware what these men were like to make of him, especially after the ignominious way he’d arrived at the ranch. But he raised his chin a notch, determined not to be cowed.

Four dogs burst into the kitchen first, medium-sized dogs with blue-ticked sandy fur, broad heads and yellow eyes that lent them a feral look. They ran straight up to Elijah and started sniffing around his legs. He froze. He didn’t know anything about dogs, and he hoped they weren’t going to bite him.

“It’s all right,” Aunt Mary reassured him. She set a large platter with four roast chickens down on the table. “They’re friendly. Let them smell your hand.”

Elijah extended his fist, tentatively, and was rewarded with a warm lick from a pink tongue. He let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and relaxed.

“That’s Lucy, Tess, Blue and Honey. Best cattle dogs in the territory, if I do say so myself.”

“How do you tell them apart?” Elijah asked, bewildered.

Aunt Mary laughed again. “You’ll learn.”

Next instant a man appeared in the doorway. He was about the largest man Elijah had ever set eyes on: tall enough and wide enough that he nearly had to duck and turn sideways so as not to hit his head or shoulders on the jamb. But far from intimidating, one look into his face inspired Elijah with confidence. Framed by an extravagant black mustache that swept down on either side to bracket his mouth was a smile wide as the Alberta plains. The smile creased his somewhat weather-beaten skin into comfortable lines, as if he smiled often, and his gray eyes held a decided twinkle. Even before he strode over to Aunt Mary and lifted her right off her feet in a great bear hug, Elijah was certain that this was his Uncle Ben.

He set her down again and turned to Elijah. “I’m Ben Kelly,” he said simply, and held out his hand.

“How do you do, sir? Thank you for having me to stay,” Elijah said, setting his hand in his uncle’s. It engulfed his entirely. Brown and callused, it was the hand of man who did more than sit behind a banker’s desk all day, like Elijah’s father. Elijah’s pale white hand seemed soft and weak by comparison.

“Now, there’s no need to call me ‘sir’. Uncle Ben will do fine.” His voice was deep, as befitted a man of his stature, but a soft Irish brogue gave a lilt to it. “And Mary and I never hoped to be so blessed as to meet you, Elijah, so it’s our good fortune.” He squeezed Elijah’s hand with surprising gentleness and released it.

A crowd of men had come into the kitchen behind Uncle Ben, and now he said, “Boys, this is my nephew from Boston, Elijah Wood.”

Elijah hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking on his part that he detected a note of pride in the words, because it served more than anything else could have to steady his nerves as nine pairs of curious eyes looked him over. It was clear why Aunt Mary had said his clothes would never do. To a man, they wore cotton shirts and waistcoats, colorful kerchiefs knotted around their necks, and denim jeans and scuffed boots. Elijah’s high-collared starched white dress shirt, green polka dot silk necktie, sack coat, tweed trousers and highly polished brown leather shoes were completely out of place. They sported facial hair, too, while he was still downy cheeked as a babe - but no shopping trip to town would solve _that_ problem. Elijah hadn’t needed to pack a razor.

He _was_ relieved to see that a couple of the men were no bigger than he, but they were lean and wiry, weather-beaten like his uncle, and he doubted the train journey from Boston would have left _them_ debilitated for days.

“This is Will,” Uncle Ben said, “and Buck, and Curly, and Johnny, and Badger, and Jed and Jessie - they’re twins, so don’t mind if you can’t tell them apart, no one can,” there was some laughter at that, “and Pat and Cole.”

Elijah said a shy ‘hello’ to each of them, and got a ready and friendly ‘Howdy’ or ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance’ in return. He tried his best to remember their names and hopefully be able to match them to their faces, but he suspected it was going to take a while.

Aunt Mary clapped her hands. “Dinner’s served,” she said. “Come and eat.”

Elijah had never seen a group of men move so fast in his life. Chairs scraped against the floorboards as everyone quickly sat down. Uncle Ben took a seat at one end of the table and Aunt Mary at the other, and Elijah was relieved to see that a space had been reserved for him catty-corner to his aunt. Friendly reception or no, he was grateful to have her on one side of him.

Uncle Ben led them in grace, and then the bowls and platters started moving around the table, followed by jugs of cider and milk, and everyone settled in to eat. That included the dogs, who lay in front of the stove, gnawing contentedly on some beef bones Aunt Mary had given them.

Elijah never forgot that first dinner at the ranch. It wasn’t so much the grub, as the men called it, though the chicken and dumplings and gravy, the pickled cabbage, onions and beets, the corn relish, and the biscuits, of course, vanished with a rapidity that was truly astonishing.

No, it was the conversation, free-wheeling and sometimes profane - though the man who let slip a ‘goddamn’ or ‘shit’ always apologized straight off to Aunt Mary, who simply looked amused. Everything and anything under the sun was fair game, from local gossip, to complaints about toothache and lumbago, to King Edward’s opposition to Irish Home Rule, and Elijah listened avidly. At home, there were topics that simply weren’t discussed, especially at the dinner table. Elijah’s father always dictated and directed the conversation, and the servants were supposed to be seen and never heard.

But though these men worked for his uncle, they spoke freely in front of him, and Aunt Mary expressed her opinions as freely as any of the men - something Elijah’s mother would never have done in a million years. It was an eye opening experience for Elijah, even if the places and names and events being mentioned meant little to him - yet.

His heart sped up, though, when he heard a name he did recognize.

“I hear they’re laying bets in Calgary whether Sean will catch that trapper Scully,” said the man that Elijah thought was Badger.

Uncle Ben laughed. “Not whether, but _when_ , that’s the wager. And if I know Sean, he’ll be back in Calgary within a month with Scully in tow. And if you like, you can put your money on that, Badger.”

The question slipped out before Elijah could remember to be shy. “Do you mean Sergeant Sean Astin?” All eyes turned to him, and his cheeks reddened slightly.

“That’s right,” his uncle replied. “Mounties keep the peace in these parts, Elijah, and all joking aside, it’s no easy task. They can be gone weeks, months even, on the trail of criminals.” He sobered. “Just last year two Mounties, good men both – the finest – lost their lives when their horses got swept away in a river they were fording. Others have starved on the trail or froze to death in the winter. It’s hard and lonely work.”

“And if one Mountie dies, another will take up the chase,” said one of the twins. “They won’t rest until justice is served.”

Glancing around, Elijah could see genuine respect in the eyes of every man at the table. They took pride in the Mounties, he thought. “Who is Scully and what did he do?”

Uncle Ben’s face darkened, and his brogue grew stronger. “He’s a no good piece of horse dung, that’s who he is. He raped an Indian woman, and beat her within an inch of her life when he was done.”

A murmur ran through the men, like a ripple of water over stones, a profane, angry murmur.

“Did she die?” Elijah asked, sick to his stomach at the mental images his uncle’s words roused.

“Scully left her for dead, but she didn’t die. She’ll live to see justice served. Sean will make certain of that. Scully took off into the backwoods, but he’ll not outrun Sergeant Sean Astin.” Another murmur ran around the table, this one of agreement.

The conversation veered off then into other topics, but Elijah’s mind remained behind with Sean, somewhere in the wilderness on the trail of a rapist. Weeks he could be gone, months even… It seemed selfish to be disappointed, considering the noble task Sean was undertaking, but Elijah’s curiosity to meet this modern day knight was if anything even greater now.

Aunt Mary served up apple pie smothered in thick cream, and coffee with a hint of chicory flavor. The pie was delicious, but Elijah had never had a large appetite and after a few bites, he admitted defeat and set down his fork. The food, combined with the warmth of the room, made its effects known, and he was all at once overwhelmed by exhaustion. With stubborn determination he fought back a succession of yawns, but even a second cup of coffee couldn’t hold the tide of weariness at bay.

His aunt caught him stifling a yawn behind his fist, and Elijah waited for her to say something, but she didn’t, only exchanged a speaking glance with his uncle. Elijah recalled what she’d said to him about being an adult and taking responsibility for his own actions. Well then, he would.

“Aunt Mary, Uncle Ben,” he said. “I’m pretty beat. May I be excused?” It was a difficult thing, to admit to weakness in front of these able men who had just put in a long day’s work on the ranch and looked none the worse for wear.

“Of course, Elijah,” she said warmly, and Uncle Ben nodded. “You go on along to bed.”

Elijah held himself a little stiffly while he said his good nights, but he could sense no condemnation or disapproval in the eyes of the ranch hands, and he hoped he was reading them aright. Their good opinion mattered to him.

He returned to his room, changed back into the warm flannel pajamas, turned out the oil lamp and crawled into bed. _I want to belong here_ , he thought with longing as he settled under the thick wool blanket and flannel sheets, _I want to be a part of this._ But his last waking thought was of Sean, somewhere in the wilderness on the trail of a criminal. He wondered if Sean was lonely, or if he ever spared so much as a passing thought for the sickly young man he’d caught in his arms at the train station.

~*~

So soundly asleep was Elijah that he didn’t hear Mary Kelly come into his room. She stood a moment looking down at him. “My word,” she said softly, “but you do look like an angel when you’re asleep, just like Sean said.”

She pulled the blanket up over his shoulders then stooped to place a kiss on his cheek. “That’s from Sis,” Mary said softly. “For I know she’s missing you something fierce. But it’s also from me, for I love you already, my dear, dear lad.”

~*~

Elijah was wakened by the raucous clang of a bell. He sat up, groggy and confused, wondering what time it was. He fumbled for his pocket watch on the small bedside table, but it was too dark to read the dial.

Beyond the curtained window, though, the faintest hint of gray in the eastern sky showed that dawn was nearing, and a rooster was crowing loudly. He’d never in his life gotten up at such an early hour. At home, he sometimes stayed up reading late into the night, and slept until ten or eleven, when a servant would bring him hot cocoa and buttered toast.

For a moment Elijah was tempted to ignore the bell, figuring it was meant to rouse the hands. Surely there was no need for him to be up at the crack of dawn. But there were no servants here to wait on him, nor did he want to be waited on.

_Begin as you mean to go on, Elijah_ , he told himself.

It wasn’t as much of a struggle as he’d imagined it would be, once he’d splashed his face with cold water. He was justifiably proud of himself when he showed up in the kitchen a short time later to be rewarded for his efforts by Aunt Mary’s approving look as she wished him good morning. He didn’t ask if she needed help, just quietly went about setting the table. It occurred to him that Aunt Mary probably had to do the washing up as well as the cooking. That was something else he could help with, Elijah decided.

There was no conversation at breakfast. The hands, several of them looking the worse for wear and smelling strongly of spirits, concentrated on their stacks of lighter-than-air flapjacks drenched in butter and maple syrup, and even Uncle Ben seemed disinclined to talk. They took themselves off as soon as they were done, but Uncle Ben lingered behind for a moment.

“After lunch, I’ll show you around the ranch, Elijah,” he said.

Elijah couldn’t wait.

He stayed behind in the kitchen to help Aunt Mary with the washing up, and she didn’t refuse his help. She had a lot of questions for him as they worked, about Boston mostly and his mother and father and various relations from whom she’d been estranged for so long. Elijah did his best to answer, although the proscribed life he’d led made it difficult for him to give her as much detail as she sought.

At times, he sensed a certain wistfulness, a hint maybe of longing, in her voice. There must be things she missed about her old life, Elijah decided. He had been so anxious to get away that it had never occurred to him there was anything worth missing. But this new insight gave him the courage to ask the question that was uppermost in his mind.

“Aunt Mary, where did you and Uncle Ben meet?” he asked, taking a dripping plate from her and drying it with a striped cotton towel.

Aunt Mary, up to her elbows in sudsy water, went still.

Elijah set the dried plate atop the growing stack. The chink of china on china sounded loud in the quiet.

“At Keith’s New Theater,” she finally said.

Elijah gaped. “At the vaudeville palace?” If she’d replied a whorehouse, he could hardly have been more surprised. Though Keith’s theater was popular with many in Boston, according to his grandfather’s dictum well-bred ladies didn’t frequent vaudeville shows. He didn’t considered them respectable for a Brahmin, and Elijah couldn’t believe he’d have allowed his daughter to go there.

His aunt chuckled at Elijah’s expression. “Yes, at the vaudeville palace, and Sis was with me.” Her chuckle turned into a full-fledged laugh as Elijah stared at her in wide-eyed amazement. “Mother was with you?” he repeated her words again.

“Indeed she was. I know it may seem hard to believe, Elijah, but your mother got up to her fair share of mischief when she was younger. Of course, I was usually the one getting her into it, but she was always game for a lark – that was before she met your father, of course, and got married.”

“But what were you doing there? Why did you go, I mean?” He simply couldn’t wrap his brain around idea of his prim and proper mother getting up to _any_ kind of mischief.

Aunt Mary resumed her dish washing with slow, unhurried movements. “Sis still plays the piano, I hope.”

Elijah nodded. His mother loved to play, and she was good, so good that his father often bragged that she was better than any concert pianist playing at the recital halls. The Woods occasionally hosted musical evenings at which she and the other ladies would perform on the grand piano in the drawing room, and she always outshone them, much to his father’s delight.

He himself had spent many happy hours listening to her play on a smaller piano in her sitting room. He could hear the music from his bedroom if he had the door open, but sometimes, especially when he was feeling most poorly, he would be carried to the sitting room where an invalid couch had been placed for his use. Swathed in warm blankets, he would lie there quietly and watch his mother bent over the keyboard, a dreamy expression on her face. Her fingers flowed across the keys, effortless and sure, as they never seemed to be at any other time. Gone was the timid, sometimes dithering, woman, and in her place was a self-assured artist, entirely the mistress of her art.

“I liked to sing and Sis liked to play, and we dreamed of running off to join a vaudeville troop. ‘The Cabot Sisters’ we were going to call our act. Of course, we knew it was impossible, but oh, the fun we had playing pretend.” Aunt Mary handed Elijah another plate. “You should have seen Sis do a high kick.”

Elijah nearly dropped the plate. “Aunt Mary, are you pulling my leg?”

“I’m not. I wish you could have known your mother as she was back then, Elijah. Before…” Aunt Mary stopped.

“Before what?”

But she only said, “It doesn’t matter. But to get back to your question, one evening Sis and I snuck out and went to Keith’s New Theater. Your grandfather would have locked us in our bedrooms for a month if he’d found out, but we considered it worth the risk, and it wasn’t the first time we’d gone out on our own without him knowing.”

Elijah’s respect for Aunt Mary increased with this revelation. Grandfather Cabot had always terrified him. Rigid, unsmiling, stern as some Biblical prophet, he had made no bones about the fact that he considered Elijah a weakling, a disgrace to the family. It was the only reason he’d given his consent to this stay with Aunt Mary and Uncle Ben, in Elijah’s opinion. He probably thought it was a blessing to be rid of his embarrassing grandson for a while.

“We bought cheap seats in the pit. There was too much chance of us being noticed and recognized if we sat up in the boxes. Not every Brahmin frowns on the palace the way Father does. Well, it just so happened that sitting in the seat next to me was the handsomest young man I’d ever seen - tall, broad-shouldered, with the most smiling eyes. All it took was one look into them, and I knew.” She sighed reminiscently. “It was the same for him. We ended up talking through most of the show.”

For a moment, a different pair of eyes, green flecked with gold, flashed into Elijah’s mind and he recalled that sense of recognition he’d felt when he looked into them. Was that what had happened to him, he wondered, but put the question away to consider later. “Did Uncle Ben live in Boston?”

“No, he was there visiting his uncles. It was quite a fortunate chance that we happened to meet,” Aunt Mary said. “Of course, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades that Father would have approved of Ben and me courting, as he’s Irish and in Father’s opinion the only good Irishman is one on the boat back to the old country, so we had to meet on the sly. Sis helped us.”

“And you eloped, right?” It sounded so romantic.

“That’s right. But believe me when I say, Elijah, that while I don’t regret running off with Ben, I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I miss your mother, and I even miss Father, despite it all.”

Elijah set down the cloth and put his arms around his aunt and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Aunt Mary,” he said. 

She hugged him back and they stood like that for a time. “Well,” she said eventually, her voice sounding husky, “it’s a long time ago now, and like I said, I’ve no regrets. But I do have a passel of cows needing milking and chickens to feed. How would you like to come with me and meet them?”

“I’d like that,” Elijah replied.

“All right, let’s finish up these dishes and find you a coat and we’ll go.”

The coat was made of buffalo hide and warmer than anything Elijah had brought with him. Aunt Mary gave him boots, too, that she called _mukluks_. They were made of soft leather lined with fur.

“You’ll ruin your nice shoes walking in all this mess,” she said. “Use these for now, and we’ll get you proper cowboy boots when we go into town.”

“And a Stetson hat?” Elijah asked eagerly. He knew what it took to look like a cowboy now and he was anxious to have the full regalia.

“And a Stetson hat,” she agreed solemnly, but with a twinkle in her eyes.

Elijah was grateful for both coat and boots as he accompanied Aunt Mary to the barn where the milk cows were stabled. It was cold, and the wind that she told him blew more days than not, had a bite to it. Still, it felt good to be in the out-of-doors and finally able to see some of the ranch that he’d only glimpsed through the window. But as if they were lodestones that drew him inexorably toward them, his eyes went at once to the distant Rockies and he experienced that sense of yearning again. _One day_ , he thought, _I’ll go to those mountains_. He knew this with a certainty beyond all knowledge.

“Aunt Mary, what’s this rope?” Elijah asked when they reached the barn. Beside the door a rope was securely knotted to a metal loop. The other end of the rope was tethered to the house, so that it stretched from one to the other at chest height.

“It’s a guide rope. It may not seem a great distance between the house and barn, but in a blizzard it’s possible to get lost trying to walk from one to the other,” she explained. “Folk have been frozen in the snow only a few feet from their doors because they were wandering in circles, disoriented. The guide rope gives you something to hold onto so that can’t happen.”

Elijah was silent, recalling the blizzard on his journey out and how he couldn’t see but a few inches past the window. He shivered, awed by the raw power of nature, something he hadn’t been aware of in the more sheltered environs of Boston.

Aunt Mary opened the barn door and the lowing of cows greeted them as they went inside. “The girls are always impatient to be milked,” she remarked, picking up a low three-legged wooden stool and a steel bucket from a stack in the aisle way. “I’ll milk Josephine first. She’s the loudest.”

Five fawn colored cows occupied adjacent stalls. Their large soft brown eyes were trained on Elijah and his aunt, and he thought they held a look of reproach.

“Have you ever milked a cow?” Aunt Mary asked, carrying stool and bucket into the second stall, presumably Josephine’s.

“Never. I’ve never even met a cow up close before.”

“Neither had I before I came here. Well, let me get Josephine comfortable, and you can have a go at milking her.”

Elijah leaned over the stall door and watched with interest as Aunt Mary set the stool down by Josephine’s left flank and placed the bucket under her pendulous udder. She took a seat, rested her forehead against the cow’s flank, and grasped two of the teats with her hands. She began a rhythmic squeezing motion with her thumbs and forefingers that sent two alternating streams of white into the bucket with a pinging sound. Josephine heaved a sigh as if relieved, and Aunt Mary said, “It’s uncomfortable for them when their udder’s full.” After a few minutes she raised her head. “All right, Elijah, you can come in now.”

With some apprehension, Elijah did. He took Aunt Mary’s place on the stool, eyeing Josephine’s cloven back hoof as he did - it looked awful close, close enough to give him a swift kick. His aunt, crouching beside him, caught his look and said reassuringly, “She doesn’t kick. Jersey cows are gentle-natured and easy to work around. Just you be kind to her and she’ll be kind to you. Now lean forward with your forehead against Josephine’s flank.” He obediently did so. Josephine’s coat was slick and warm; it felt good against his chilled skin. He wasn’t so sure about her smell, but he supposed he’d get used to it. 

“Give me your hands.” He held them out, and Aunt Mary guided them to the proper position, palms around the teat, thumb and forefinger at the base. “Never pull on the teats. Just squeeze them - first one teat then the other. You’ll find the rhythm soon enough.” With her fingers over his, she squeezed and released, squeezed and released, and Elijah watched the milk stream into the bucket, frothy and rich. After a minute she removed her hands and sat back on her heels. Elijah kept squeezing as she’d shown him, but despite his efforts the stream slowed to a trickle. 

“Squeeze a little harder, Elijah,” she instructed, so he did, and the milk streamed out again. “Good! You see? You’re already getting the knack of it.” 

“It’s not as difficult as I thought it would be,” Elijah remarked.

“Your arms will get tired, though. It takes some getting used to.”

She was right. Soon enough, the muscles in his forearms started to burn and quiver with the strain of the unfamiliar motion. Elijah gritted his teeth, ignored the discomfort and kept going until the pail was nearly full and Josephine’s udder looked, to his inexperienced eyes at least, deflated. 

“That’ll do nicely,” his aunt said.

Elijah sat back, feeling pleased and proud - and also relieved. He wasn’t certain how much longer his arms could have held out. He gave Josephine a little pat on her round side and got up. Aunt Mary reached under the cow and retrieved the pail, lifting it effortlessly and without spilling a drop. 

“Fetch the stool and we’ll milk Yum-Yum next.” 

“Yum-Yum?” Elijah repeated, and then he giggled. “Aunt Mary, are your cows named after characters from Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan’s operas?”

“That’s right: Josephine, Yum-Yum, Mabel, Iolanthe and Patience.” She set the full bucket down in the barn aisle and picked up another empty one. “I’m very fond of their operas.”

“So am I.” Elijah recalled what his aunt had said about liking to sing. He hesitated, hoping she wouldn’t think he was being forward, then said, “Would you sing something for me? From _The Mikado_?”

But Aunt Mary didn’t seem to mind the request. “What would you like to hear?” she asked as they went into Yum-Yum’s stall. 

Elijah considered. “ _The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze_.”

“That’s one of the girls’ favorites.” Aunt Mary smiled at Elijah’s dubious expression. “They like me to sing to them while I’m milking, and I swear it helps to bring the milk down faster.”

And so she sang, and the very first notes thrilled through Elijah as they swelled and filled the barn with their beauty. He stood entranced, and could have sworn that Yum-Yum was enjoying the performance as much as he was. For a performance it was: Mary Kelly had a magnificent voice, rich and expressive, and as he listened Elijah could easily imagine her and his mother dreaming of running off to join a vaudeville troop. The Cabot Sisters would have been a roaring success, he thought, and for a moment felt almost wistful, until he recalled that his father would never have married a vaudeville performer.

When she was done, the last lingering note fading into the stillness, Elijah burst into spontaneous applause. “Oh Aunt Mary, that was wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Sing another, please?”

“I have a better idea, Elijah,” she said, though she looked pleased by the request. “How about we trade places and we’ll sing together.”

“Oh, but I can’t sing like you,” protested Elijah. 

“It’s not about the quality of your voice, but the joy in your heart,” Aunt Mary replied. “Do you like to sing?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“Then sing with me, Elijah. Your voice will be beautiful to God’s ears and to mine.”

There was no arguing with that, so he sat down on the stool by Yum-Yum’s side and they sang while Elijah took his turn milking her. They started with _The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring_ then moved on to songs from _Pirates of Penzance_ and _HMS Pinafore_. A few times Elijah’s breath caught painfully from overtaxing his damaged lungs, but Aunt Mary simply waited for him to recover, and then they went on singing. By the time they sang the final words of _The Nightingale Sighed_ , the last of the cows, Iolanthe, was milked. Elijah’s arms had given up the fight two cows ago, tired out by the unaccustomed work, but nevertheless he’d enjoyed himself immensely and discovered that the girls, as Aunt Mary called them, were indeed docile and affectionate. Patience especially lived up to her name, placidly chewing her cud while Elijah stood by her head and sang to her.

“That was fun,” Elijah said a little shyly when they were done.

“It was, wasn’t it? We’re fond of music here, as you’ll see. Ben has a splendid voice and whenever Sean visits he brings his fiddle, and oh, but you should hear him play, Elijah.”

Elijah fervently hoped he’d have the chance, and that Sean’s quest to bring in Scully wouldn’t take so long that Elijah was back in Boston before he returned.

Elijah helped Aunt Mary bring three buckets of fresh milk to the calves on the other side of the barn. Hefting the heavy buckets and pouring the milk into the troughs was no easy matter, and like the milking, made him shamefacedly aware that he’d led a life of little physical exertion. The calves, all knobbly knees and big eyes, were adorable, but when Elijah said as much, his aunt cautioned, “Don’t let yourself get attached, Elijah. The girls are as much pets as anything, but we don’t name the calves. They’ll be slaughtered for the table when they’re old enough.” 

Aunt Mary let the cows out into their pasture, then they covered the remaining two milk buckets with cheesecloth and carried them to the spring house. Elijah had to stop and rest several times on the short walk, and if he hadn’t already formed the very highest opinion of his aunt, her patience with his frailty would have raised it to the rafters. She didn’t offer to take the bucket for him, though he was certain she could have managed to carry both, but simply waited, as she had while they were singing, for Elijah to regain his strength and go on.

From the spring house, they moved on to the chicken coop, and Aunt Mary brought a bucket of table scraps from breakfast to give the flock. There Elijah had his first encounter with the feisty rooster he’d heard crowing earlier. Suspicious of the stranger entering the pen, he charged up to Elijah, red comb bristling, and pecked irascibly at his feet, making Elijah very glad of the boots he was wearing.

“Chanticleer’s a bully, but you just have to ignore him,” Aunt Mary said. “He’ll get used to you.”

“How long will it take?” Elijah asked, side-stepping another attack. Chanticleer was large with glossy orange and black feathers, and with his wings outspread and ruffled, he was an impressive not to mention intimidating sight.

“Not long. Besides, he’s more interested in the food than you,” she said.

“I sure hope so,” Elijah said, and his aunt laughed.

Fortunately, she was right. As soon as the first scraps hit the ground, Chanticleer lost interest in the intruder into his domain and started vying for his share of the food. 

While the hens were busy eating, they gathered about a dozen warm speckled brown eggs from the empty nests, and went back to the house. Elijah consulted his pocket watch and was amazed to discover that it was barely ten o’clock. He felt as if he’d been up for many hours, and he was bone tired. 

“Why don’t you go have a lie-down for a while,” Aunt Mary said gently. “I’ve housecleaning to do and lunch to start.”

Elijah was tempted, oh how he was tempted. But instead he said, “I can help you.”

“You dear boy,” she said, wrapping him in a warm hug. “But you didn’t come here to be worked half to death, Elijah. You’ve earned a break.”

Grudgingly, he accepted that she was right. But still, to go back to bed seemed to him an admission of defeat. “I think I’d rather sit outside with a book and read for a while, if that’s all right.”

“The garden’s around back and you'll find a bench there you can sit on," she said simply. "It’s sheltered from the wind, so you shouldn’t be too cold, but I'll make you something hot to drink to take with you and a bite to eat. I expect you're hungry.”

He was, as a matter of fact. "Thanks, Aunt Mary," he said, and went off to his room to get a book. He hadn't had time yet to unpack and arrange his books, but he knew exactly where to find the one he sought: Tennyson’s _Idylls of the King_. He loved the romantic poems of Arthur and his knights, and the moody Doré steel engravings that illustrated them. Tennyson's writing never failed to transport him to another time and place.

A short time later, armed with a mug of coffee and warm biscuits, Elijah carried the precious red leather volume outside to the garden and took a seat on the bench. Set between the two arms of the roughly U-shaped house, the garden was sheltered from the wind, and the sun felt warm and welcome. At home, signs of spring would already be showing in the form of crocuses and snowdrops. But here, not even the faintest hint of new green peeked through the few bare patches where the snow had melted enough to reveal the soil. 

He opened the book on his lap and started to read from the beginning, but after a few minutes Elijah flipped forward to a passage that he’d read so many times he could recite it by heart. And as he read, he trembled inside.

_But Arthur who beheld his cloudy brows_  
Approach'd him, and with full affection flung  
One arm about his neck, and spake and said.  
'Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have  
Most love and most affiance, for I know  
What thou hast been in battle by my side,  
And many a time have watch'd thee at the tilt  
Strike down the lusty and long-practised knight,  
And let the younger and unskill'd go by  
To win his honour and to make his name,  
And loved thy courtesies and thee, a man  
Made to be loved ;—but now I would to God,  
For the wild people say wild things of thee,  
Thou could'st have loved this maiden, shaped, it seems,  
By God for thee alone, and from her face,  
If one may judge the living by the dead,  
Delicately pure and marvellously fair,  
Who might have brought thee, now a lonely man  
Wifeless and heirless, noble issue, sons  
Born to the glory of thy name and fame,  
My knight, the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake.' 

Elijah could hide from the truth no longer. He was different from other boys. It wasn’t the tragic love between Lancelot and Guinevere that thrilled his heart, but that of Lancelot and Arthur, who loved his knight, _a man made to be loved_. That was the sort of love that he wanted, the love of another man, not a woman. He knew it was considered abnormal and wrong to have those feelings, but nevertheless he did, and he couldn’t feel ashamed of them, either. How could he, in the face of such a noble and uplifting love as Tennyson wrote of? 

His gaze went to the distant mountains; the sun reflected off their white peaks with blinding intensity. Pensively, Elijah returned to the question he’d asked himself earlier, when Aunt Mary told him how she and Uncle Ben fell in love the first time they looked into each other’s eyes. _Is that what happened to me when I looked into Sean’s eyes?_

He didn’t know for certain, for that look had lasted only a brief moment and he’d been sick and dizzy, but he thought that it was, and the trembling inside him grew stronger and it brought with it as much fear as longing. For what chance was there that Sean had experienced the same sense of recognition and rightness? What were the odds that he, too, preferred the love of a man to that of a woman, that he would be Elijah’s knight, as Lancelot was Arthur’s? Sean probably already had a Guinevere to love and adore. His hand clenched around the binding, bringing a shooting pain from the sore muscles in his forearm. But he welcomed the pain; it distracted him from the pain in his heart.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncle Ben gives Elijah a tour of the ranch, Elijah has his first riding lesson, and he gains a new admirer.

They were racing across the snow on a wooden sled pulled by a team of husky dogs. Uncle Ben stood on the runners behind Elijah, towering over him, while Elijah, bundled in his buffalo hide coat with a beaver fur hat covering his head, sat in the basket. In front of him the dogs, ten of them harnessed in tandem, and an eleventh leading, bounded across the snow, pink tongues lolling. They’d been running with tireless enthusiasm since he and Uncle Ben had set out from the ranch, and they showed no signs of flagging.

 Expecting a tour on foot around the immediate environs of the ranch, or perhaps his first-ever ride on horseback, Elijah was surprised when Uncle Ben informed him they’d be traveling by sled. This was no unpleasant surprise, but rather an undoubted thrill. One of the photos accompanying the article about the Royal North-West Mounted Police that he and his mother had read in the Boston paper had been of a Mountie with his team of sled dogs. Elijah had devoured every tidbit in the article, and recalled vividly what it had said about the importance of the sled dogs in the remote wilderness that a Mountie had to patrol, how they were the best means of transportation in winter, and were used to bring medicines to the sick and food to the hungry.  
  
“That’s all true,” Uncle Ben had agreed when Elijah told him what he’d read, “but what that article didn’t mention is what a grand way it is to travel, Elijah.”

It _was_ a grand way to travel, and Elijah was awed by the intelligence and responsiveness of the huskies, who followed his uncle’s voice commands without any need for rein or whip, as a team of horses would. He thought the dogs beautiful, too, with their plush tawny or gray coats, thick ruffs, prick ears and alert expressions, but Uncle Ben had warned him, when he led him to where the sled dogs were tied outside in the snow with a small straw-lined wooden shelter each, that they were half timber wolf and not pets to be played with. So he kept a respectful, if admiring, distance while his uncle buckled the expectant dogs into their leather harnesses.  
  
They’d soon left behind the horse paddocks and barns and the bunkhouse, and Uncle Ben drove the sled through a coulee, following the course of the frozen river that wended through it and passing among clusters of evergreen trees. Other than the occasional snowshoe hare that startled out of hiding and bounded away with astonishing swiftness, they encountered neither man nor beast, but to Elijah everything seemed alive in a way it never had in Boston. He’d never seen a sky so blue or snow so dazzlingly white.

Suddenly Uncle Ben raised his voice. “Haw!” He called out. “Haw!” The lead dog, that his uncle called Balto, guided the willing team to the left, and the sled followed, swinging in a wide sweeping turn, the runners hissing through the snow.  
  
The dogs began climbing out of the coulee, their straining bodies rising and falling as they breasted a gradual rise, and when they reached the top, Elijah let out a gasp of pure wonder. He now beheld the Rockies closer and with less obstruction than he’d been able to see them from the house, and their magnificence left him stunned.  
  
Nearer at hand, but still a good way off, he saw a great herd of Hereford cattle streaming up a hillside like a red and white river, with men on horseback flanking them and dogs darting this way and that, keeping them on the move.  
  
“Whoa!” Uncle Ben called, stepping on the sled’s brake, and the team slowed from a lope to a trot then a walk, and finally stopped.  
  
Without the wind whistling in his ears, Elijah could hear, faint but clear across the distance, whoops and whistles and barks. Otherwise, there was no sound, only a hushed stillness as if they were inside a great cathedral.  
  
“We’re moving the herds to higher ground,” Uncle Ben said. “The cattle spend the winter months in the coulees, where they’re protected from the worst of the weather. But when the chinook arrives, and it will soon, according to the Indians, the snow and river ice will melt and the coulees will flood. We don’t want to lose a single head to drowning if we can help it. It’s always a race against time, and the blizzard delayed us.”  
  
“Then shouldn’t you be out there with the others?” Elijah felt guilty at taking him away from such important work.  
  
“And not show my very own nephew, just come out from Boston no less, the most beautiful country on God’s green earth?” Uncle Ben countered.  
  
“Besides, Elijah, a wise cattleman chooses his hands well, and that I’ve done. They won’t miss me for one afternoon.” After a pause, he asked, “Well, what do you think? It’s a far cry from Boston.”  
  
“A very far cry from Boston,” Elijah agreed. “It’s so vast, Uncle Ben. The sky seems to go on forever.”  
  
“I grew up in County Kerry, and it’s green there and lovely, but once you’ve lived under this sky, anywhere else seems confining. Sean likes to say that a man can breathe here, and he’s right.”  
  
Elijah felt a secret thrill; any mention of Sean he greedily lapped up, like a hungry kitten.  
  
“How large is the property, Uncle?”  
  
“6,000 acres,” Uncle Ben replied, and Elijah let out a low whistle. “It may seem a lot, but compared to some, it’s not much. The biggest spreads, the ones owned by the cattle companies, run upwards of 50,000 acres. But not many ranches are better situated than the ours.” Pride was evident in his uncle’s voice. “I came to Alberta almost twenty-four years ago, when I was eighteen. The Canadian government was offering 160 acres free to any man willing to settle here and farm the land. I put every cent of profit into buying up more land - 1 cent an acre they were asking - and my first heads of cattle. And now everything you see from here to those hills and down into the valley on the other side belongs to me.”  
  
He didn’t say anything for so long after that that Elijah finally tilted his head back to look up at him. Uncle Ben was stroking his long mustache contemplatively, seeming lost in thought, and Elijah wondered what was going through his mind. Finally, he said, “Your Grandfather Cabot called me a lazy, no-good Irishman, and words far worse that I’ll spare you. But I’ve worked hard and provided for my Mary. She’s not wanted for anything.”  
  
Elijah realized there were wounds that time might never completely heal. He’d heard the wistful note in Aunt Mary’s voice when she spoke of home, and her regret at the estrangement from her family was palpable. Now it was apparent that Uncle Ben nursed some bitterness over the past. To a man of pride the unjust accusations of James Cabot must still sting even after all these years. He didn’t know what to say. He felt all the callowness of his youth and the sheltered life he’d led, and embarrassed by his inexperience. Why, he’d never so much as kissed anyone.  
  
But Uncle Ben didn’t appear to require an answer. He dropped his hand and smiled down at Elijah. “Well, let’s be on our way. We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.” He released the sled’s brake. “Mush! Mush!” he commanded the dogs, and the huskies were off, leaning eagerly into their harnesses, moving faster and faster until the sled was almost flying across the snow-covered hillside.  
  
The wind was fresh and invigorating, and Elijah took a deep lungful with barely a twinge of discomfort. _A man can breathe here,_ Sean had said to Uncle Ben, and he was right. _Maybe I’ll be able to breathe here, too,_ Elijah thought.  
  
For a moment, Elijah almost pitied his grandfather, with his rigid judgements and unfeeling heart. But his prevailing emotion was joy to have escaped, at least for a while, from the confines of Boston, which had been stifling him in more ways than one.  


~*~  


Two days later, the promised chinook arrived.  
  
Elijah woke sweating and uncomfortable at dawn, having kicked the covers down to the foot of the bed in his sleep. The sky was aflame as if some great forest fire raged, but it wasn’t fire only the sun rising. Intrigued, Elijah climbed out of bed and opened the window sash. A gust of almost shockingly warm air billowed the curtains and swirled into the room. The temperature must have risen a good forty degrees overnight, he thought, amazed. A line of steady drips, _plop plop plop_ , came from the eaves of the roof. The snow was already melting.  
  
The air was dry and therefore kind to his lungs so Elijah didn’t shut the window again but left it open. As he contemplated returning to bed, Chanticleer crowed lustily from the chicken coop. It was nearly time to get up anyway, so instead of getting back in the bed, Elijah gathered up his soap and his tooth powder and tooth brush and hurried to the bathroom, eager to wash and dress and start the new day. Aunt Mary had promised to take him into Calgary after breakfast to buy new clothes. They were going to spend the night at a hotel and return on the morrow, and he could hardly wait.

But bad news greeted him when he joined her in the kitchen a short time later.  
  
“I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone our trip to Calgary, Elijah,” Aunt Mary said. She sounded regretful, and Elijah knew she had been looking forward to their visit to the city with as much eagerness as he had. “With the chinook blowing, it’s too risky. The rivers will be overflowing their banks soon and roads will be washed out.”  
  
Elijah was disappointed, not least because Uncle Ben had promised to give him riding lessons as soon as he was properly outfitted. But he put a good face on his disappointment, and was rewarded when his uncle suggested that evening over dinner that they go ahead and have a lesson tomorrow anyway.  
  
“We’ll rustle up some duds for you to wear. They might be on the large side, but that won’t matter.”  
  
So it was that at last Elijah was outfitted in proper cowboy clothes: Levis, a blue plaid shirt with pearl buttons, and scuffed leather boots. The fact that the boots needed crumpled paper stuffed in the toes to stay on, the shirt and pant cuffs had to be rolled three times, and a belt was tightly cinched around his waist to keep the Levis from heading south was somehow immaterial. For the first time since arriving he felt like he fit, even if the clothes didn’t, quite.  
  
His happiness was completed when Uncle Ben handed him a pair of fringed leather chaps to put on before they headed out to the paddock for his lesson. Elijah had noticed that some of the men walked with a bow-legged swagger. While he wasn’t bow-legged, he definitely had a swagger in his stride as he walked beside his uncle with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops.  
  
Though both Uncle Ben and Aunt Mary had warned him about the flooding that the chinook would cause, Elijah hadn’t realized how quickly the hot dry winds would act. In the space of twenty-four hours, all but the deepest patches of snow were melted, leaving the yard and paddocks muddy, and the ice on the river was breaking up with cracking sounds sharp as pistol shots that reverberated in the hillsides. The cattle had made it up to the higher ground in time, and Elijah now truly understood the urgency. The frozen river along which only a few days earlier the dog sled had traveled was a raging torrent swollen by the snow and ice melt, and overspilling its banks, flooding the surrounding area.  
  
With travel temporarily on hold and the cattle safe, Elijah’s first riding lesson became something of an event. Several of the hands, Badger, Will, Pat, Jed and Jesse (Elijah was pretty well able to put faces to names now), straddled the corral fence as Uncle Ben introduced Elijah to his mount, a rotund piebald mare. She had one brown eye and one blue and didn’t exactly fit into Elijah’s mental image of himself galloping hell for leather on a fiery black stallion. But he supposed even Arthur’s Knights had had to start _somewhere_.  
  
“Her name’s Mollycoddle,” Uncle Ben said, rubbing her affectionately on the neck.  
  
“Mollycoddle?” Elijah repeated, and there were some snickers from the watching ranch hands. He supposed it _was_ kind of a silly name.  
  
“But we call her Molly for short,” he added, shooting the watching men a look Elijah couldn’t decipher.  
  
“Hi Molly.” Elijah offered her a lump of the sugar he’d brought with him. Her whiskery muzzle tickled his palm as she swept the sugar off his palm with a very large and pink tongue and crunched it.  
  
Uncle Ben said, “The first thing you need to learn is how to saddle and bridle her.” He showed Elijah how to use his thumbs to open Molly’s mouth so he could slip the bit into it and slide the crown of the bridle over her ears to secure it. Then he had Elijah take the saddle pad slung over the top railing of the corral and set it on Molly’s broad back before adding the saddle, which had a confusing number of straps attached to it and weighed almost as much as Elijah did himself, or so it seemed.  
  
But he managed to hoist the saddle onto Molly without help, aware every second of the men observing him and determined not to give them any reason to laugh. The mare stood patiently as Elijah fumbled with the straps, following Uncle Ben’s instructions to fasten the breastplate and the two cinches that circled her ample belly. He felt justifiably proud of himself when he was done and Molly was saddled and bridled. His heart raced a little with excitement, too, because he was about to get on her and finally have his first-ever ride on a horse.  
  
“Now I’ll show you how to mount up,” Uncle Ben said. “Take the reins in your left hand - you can grab hold of a hank of Molly’s mane with them to keep your hand in place - and then put your left foot in the stirrup.” Obediently Elijah did as instructed, twisting his fingers into the coarse black and white hair just in front of the pommel and setting his booted foot in the stirrup. “Push off with your right leg and swing it up and over the cantle. Settle into the saddle gently - don’t thump down like a sack of potatoes; Molly won’t like that.”  
  
Envisioning the many different ways he could make a fool of himself, from failing to get his leg over Molly’s back to falling off the other side, Elijah hopped up and down a couple times to gain momentum, and pushed off. He straightened his left leg in the stirrup, swung his right leg over the back of the saddle and then settled down into the worn leather, trying very hard not to imitate a sack of potatoes. The distance to the ground wasn’t as great as he’d feared it would be and Molly’s round sides gave him plenty to grip with his legs.  
  
“Good job, Elijah,” called Will, and Elijah felt about as tall as his uncle at that moment.  
  
Uncle Ben gave an approving nod. “That was exactly how it should be done. Now take the reins in your left hand like so,” he demonstrated, “and rest your right hand on your thigh. You’ll steer Molly with the reins on her neck - don’t yank on her mouth.” He adjusted Elijah’s stirrups to the correct length and stepped back. “All right. You’re ready to start now, Elijah. I’ll just have you walk Molly around the paddock this first time and learn how to steer her.” He tilted his Stetson back and smiled. “How do you feel?”  
  
Elijah smiled back. “Good.” It was true. He did feel good, as if he belonged on Molly’s back.  
  
“Then give Molly a nudge with your heels.”  
  
He touched her sides with his heels and Molly started to walk. Elijah instinctively tensed up. He hoped she wasn’t about to take off at a run or anything.  
  
“Stay relaxed. Let your hips move with her as she walks.”  
  
With an effort, Elijah made himself relax. It helped that Molly seemed disinclined to go any faster, but ambled along as if in no hurry. Uncle Ben had him steer Molly this way and that, make her halt and start her walking again. As the minutes passed, his confidence grew, and he began to think that riding a horse wasn’t as difficult as he’d imagined it would be.  
  
His imagination took flight. He was no longer on the stout piebald mare, but that fiery black stallion. He was galloping across the hillside, the wind in his face, the way it had been on the sled a few days earlier, heading toward the snow-capped mountains...  
  
One second Elijah was sitting tall and proud, the next he was heading straight for the muddy ground, which he hit with enough force to knock the breath briefly from him. Molly had suddenly shied, violently, dipping her shoulder as she did, and Elijah, taken completely by surprise, came right off her back and was now eating dirt. Literally.  
  
What the-  
  
Dazed by the unexpectedness of his fall, he raised his head to see Molly staring down at him with what he would have sworn was a ‘hello, what are you doing down there?’ look in her mismatched eyes.  
  
“You all right?” Uncle Ben asked, coming over to him.  
  
Spitting mud from his mouth, Elijah sat up. If there was one thing at which he’d long been expert, it was assessing his physical condition, and he knew that while he was probably going to be plenty sore, he was in one piece. But even if he wasn’t in one piece, there was no way on God’s green earth that he’d have admitted it. The humiliation of falling off was bad enough, and he didn’t dare look towards the men sitting on the paddock railing and no doubt grinning at his comeuppance.  
  
“I’m fine,” Elijah said, gritting his gritty teeth and climbing to his feet before his humiliation could be completed by Uncle Ben having to help him up. He walked stiffly the few paces to where Molly was standing and took hold of her dangling reins. Without another word, he gathered them up, set his foot in the stirrup and mounted her.  
  
Only then did he risk a glance toward the hands, and not a one of them was grinning. Neither was Uncle Ben. He came to Molly’s side and laid a hand on Elijah’s thigh. “You’re a game one, Elijah. I’m proud of you, lad.”  
  
“But I fell off,” Elijah protested, and wiped a clod of mud from his chin.  
  
“Well, I’m going to have to make a confession here,” Uncle Ben said, looking slightly shame-faced. “You see, Molly’s name is a bit of a joke. We call her ‘Mollycoddle’ because she can be the hardest horse on the ranch to ride.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Molly has a quirk, you might say. If she senses that you’re wool-gathering, she’ll find something to shy at, or invent it if she can’t find it. So don’t feel bad at coming a cropper. She’s caught many a more experienced rider by surprise.”  
  
Elijah couldn’t help but be disappointed and even hurt by Uncle Ben’s confession, shame-faced or not. He’d set Elijah up, it seemed, not breathing a word of her ‘quirk’ beforehand. He had to know that a novice rider like Elijah wouldn’t be able to stay on if Molly shied. The others had known, too, and that explained why they were hanging around to watch and their snickers when his uncle had told Elijah Molly’s name.  
  
Uncle Ben said, reading him easily enough, “Ah, and now you’re wondering why I’d put you on Molly and not tell you. It wasn’t to make you look the fool, Elijah, I promise.”  
  
“Then why did you?” Elijah asked stiffly, not certain he believed him.  
  
“Because a careless rider can lose his life out here," he said soberly, "and it's important for you to pay attention while you’re riding. Now it's true I could have told you that, but sometimes you have to experience something for yourself to understand it. Even the steadiest cow pony could shy under the right circumstances, Elijah. If you get dusted and your horse heads for the hills with your rifle and saddlebags, leaving you to walk home on foot, or worse, leaving you injured or in the company of a grizzly or a mountain lion, what do you think is like to happen?”  
  
Elijah was silent, considering the picture his uncle had painted. It wasn’t a pleasant one to contemplate. He had to realize that this wasn’t Boston, where he’d been sheltered and secure, if stifled. This was a different world, beautiful but wild and perilous, too. Uncle Ben was right. He _could_ have told Elijah, but it wouldn’t have made the same impact as hitting the ground for real.  
  
“I’ll do my best not to ride with my head in the clouds again,” Elijah said with determination then added ruefully, “Although I expect I’ll be eating dirt a few more times, to be honest.” He’d spent so many years living in a dream world, how could he not? And the mountains and Sean were a powerful distraction, too.  
  
“You just try your best, lad, that’s all a body can do. And when you can sit one of Molly’s shies without falling off, I’ve got a handsome sorrel gelding lined up for you to call your own while you’re with us.”  
  
With that incentive before him, plus a natural reluctance to hit the ground again, Elijah made it through the rest of his riding lesson without giving Molly any opportunity to shy and dump him off.  
  
When the lesson was over, he unsaddled and unbridled Molly and Uncle Ben showed him how to rub her down with a fistful of straw. To show there were no hard feelings on his part, he fed Molly several more lumps of sugar before turning her loose to join the other horses. Will, Pat, Jed and Jessie departed for the bunk house, but not without each of them giving Elijah a friendly slap on the back and an encouraging word. The slaps nearly felled Elijah, but he didn’t mind. It was worth every aching muscle and splash of mud to earn their respect.  
  
Jed said, “I come a cropper onc’t riding Molly. That old mare dumped me in a creek. Jesse still don’t let me forget it.”  
  
“And never will. Jed looked like a drowned rat. A large, pissed off drowned rat.” Everyone laughed, including Elijah. Jesse had a way with him, and though he and his brother were twins, there was a liveliness to him that differentiated him from the more taciturn Jed. He also had a way of glancing at Elijah when he thought Elijah wasn’t looking. What Elijah glimpsed in his eyes was frank interest, and it made him wonder if Jesse was another such as himself. He had a feeling that the young ranch hand was; his clap on Elijah’s back lingered a few seconds too long and only seemed to confirm it.

Jesse wasn’t bad-looking with his sparkling dark eyes and ginger mustache, but beyond him loomed the great snow-capped mountains, a constant reminder of the Mountie who lived at their feet.  


~*~  


Elijah rode each afternoon, and each afternoon Mollycoddle lived up to her ironic name at least once, sometimes twice, catching her rider wool-gathering and seeing to it that he paid for his inattention.  
  
Four days later Elijah sat soaking in the tub of hot water Aunt Mary prepared for him when he limped, stiff and sore, into the house. The chinook had stopped blowing and it was colder and the ground less forgiving.  
  
Truth was, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from being distracted by thoughts of Sean, of where he was and whether he had caught up to the trapper Scully yet and when he’d return to visit Aunt Mary and Uncle Ben. And as soon as his mind went there Molly, with whatever uncanny intuition she possessed, knew it. Though according to his uncle his riding was improving by leaps and bounds, and he’d graduated to a jog and today a lope, he was nowhere near proficient enough yet to stay on Molly when she shied.  
  
Wincing a little, Elijah shifted in the tub, trying to find a more comfortable position. His limbs were adorned with bruises in varying colors from bright purple-red to midnight blue, but he considered them honorable bruises, almost war wounds in fact. No matter how many times Molly unseated him, he vowed he’d drag himself up again until one day he’d stick with her and graduate to a real cow pony, the sorrel gelding that his uncle had promised him.  
  
As he rocked on his tender buttocks - his first lope had resulted in his behind making contact with the saddle rather hard a few times until he grew accustomed to Molly’s rocking gait - his cock slipped between his thighs. Unconsciously, he tightened his thigh muscles to trap it there, and it responded to the pressure with a pulse and jerk; Elijah went perfectly still but his pulse sped up and a slow flush of heat swept through him.

He’d always been a dreamer, as much by inclination as circumstance, and as he’d grown older, those dreams had sometimes taken such a form that his body was stirred to aching hardness. He’d learned how to relieve the ache surreptitiously, his heart beating fast as his hand stole downward beneath the bed covers and he touched himself, while forbidden images played in his mind, bringing him to a swift, explosive climax.  
  
As star bursts of color danced behind his eyelids, Elijah would give himself over to the sensations, let them sweep him away as thoroughly as any splendid tale of knighthood and chivalry. For those precious, panting moments, he would feel connected to something bigger than himself, something vital, real and important - and yet the feeling never lasted. Guilt for both thoughts and deed would swamp him and leave him convinced that, as Grandfather Cabot would no doubt say, he was going to be damned for having unnatural urges.  
  
Try as he might, though, he could never conquer those urges or quite banish the nebulous images that roused them, whether he was damned for them or not.  
  
Now, the nebulous had become concrete, and with a quick glance toward the bathroom door to be certain the latch was securely in place, Elijah allowed his head to fall back, his eyes to close and his pale thighs to splay so that his knees were braced against the sides of the tub. Immediately Sean’s image appeared behind his eyelids. How was it, he wondered, that he could picture Sean so clearly when he’d had barely a glimpse of the Mountie before fainting? He didn’t know; but so it was. He could see every detail as if each had been burned into his retinas, like one staring into the sun.

_Eyes of clear green flecked with amber like autumn leaves floating on a translucent pond and bracketed with creases at the corners. A full upper lip, a snub nose, a hint of beard shadowing a firm jawline._  
  
Elijah’s right hand disappeared beneath the water, fisted around his swelling flesh and almost of its own accord began to move. It didn’t take long before that delicious tingling feeling came over him and tension rose inside. He rushed eagerly to meet it, pumping his hand faster, while his toes curled with the unbearable wonderfulness of the sensation. A whimper escaped him so he hastily stuffed his soapy washcloth in his mouth to muffle any sound. Just in time. His heels dug into the tub floor as he arched his back and release took him and there was no doubting the cry he let out would have been heard otherwise, a cry of ‘Sean!’  
  
Elijah slumped back, panting, and watched the creamy cloud of his semen that had flowered in the water slowly dissipate. His imagination could only go so far in picturing what it would actually be like to lie with another man. It wasn’t talked about and he sure as heck couldn’t ask anyone. His father had filled him in on the ‘birds and the bees’, and it had been hard to decide whether the conversation was more awkward for him or his father. The whole thing had left him with a vague distaste, because he simply couldn’t envision himself touching a woman’s breasts or other parts and enjoying it. But beyond that, he was certain the mechanics had to be different when the ones mating had the same parts. Would Sean know?  
  
He only prayed that he might discover the answer to that question, and many others, before it was time to return home.  


~*~  


“I could find it in my heart to be angry with you, Ben Kelly,” said Mary. She was sitting before the looking glass at her dressing table, performing the nightly ritual of one hundred brush strokes through her unbound tresses with a silver-backed boar bristle brush. Her hair might be threaded with silver, but it was still her greatest vanity, other than her singing voice. She thought it was good for a person’s soul to have a little vanity, no matter what Scripture or anyone else said.  
  
“And why would that be, Mary love?” Ben asked, unbuttoning his red union suit.  
  
“You’re like to kill that boy. He’s all over bruises and walking like he’s at least a hundred years old. How many times does he have to fall off that ornery old mare before you take pity on him?”  
  
“Mary,” said Ben in as serious a voice as she’d ever heard him use, “Elijah needs to be tough, and even more _he_ has to believe he’s tough. Life’s not easy for men like him. He’s got a hard row to hoe ahead of him.”  
  
“But he’s getting stronger every day. The pleurisy may not plague him forever.”  
  
“That’s not what I mean.”  
  
Mary paused in her brushing and met Ben’s gaze in the mirror. “Whatever do you mean then?”  
  
Ben finished stripping off the union suit and sat on the edge of the bed. “Lass, it’s not a woman that Elijah will ever be wanting to warm his bed.”  
  
Mary was silent; her hand fell still in mid-stroke. She wasn’t shocked into silence, because she was a worldly woman. Ben never kept things from her nor tried to shelter her. She was well aware that there were men who preferred the company of other men, even among their ranch hands. But it had not occurred to her that Elijah was one, too. A hard row to hoe? More like an impossible one. If her father ever found out, goodness only knew what he would do. Warren might be Elijah’s father, but John Cabot played the tune that he, and the rest of the family save herself, danced to.

“What makes you think that?” she asked, deeply troubled.  
  
“Have you seen how Elijah looks whenever Sean’s name is mentioned?” Ben countered her question with one of his own. “Have you seen the way Jesse looks at Elijah when he thinks the lad won’t notice? Like calls to like, Mary.”  
  
She had observed both, as a matter of fact, but she’d attributed the worshipful glow to Elijah’s fascination with the Mounties, not a fascination with that particular Mountie, and Jesse’s admiring looks were no surprise - Elijah was good looking enough to turn the head of anyone, man or woman.

“If he sets his heart on Sean, I fear it will be broken,” she said. It wasn’t Jesse who concerned her. It wasn’t Jesse who made Elijah’s eyes shine at the mention of his name. It wasn't Jesse who had lost a wife and child to typhus.  
  
“Then broken it will be,” Ben replied, but gently. “Elijah has to make his own way in the world, for good or for ill, like the rest of us. That’s why he came here, after all.”  
  
“He came for his health,” Mary argued.  
  
“He came because he needed to be free.” He held her gaze. “You’d know a bit about that, now wouldn’t you?”  
  
“I don’t want him to be hurt, Ben.” Elijah was a ray of sunshine in all their lives with his sparkling blue eyes and his infectious giggle and his enthusiasm for every aspect of life at the ranch. She’d grown to love him dearly for his own self, but he was even more special to her because he was the son of her beloved Sis, whom she still missed so very much. The thought of anything happening to Elijah was insupportable.  
  
“I know you don’t, and neither do I. But he’s a fighter, Elijah is, or he’d not have survived all he’s been through.” Then he added quietly, “And he’ll always have a home with us, if he’s in need of shelter.”  
  
“Oh Ben, you’re a good man, and I do love you,” Mary said. He understood without having to be told that the greatest danger for Elijah was back in Boston in the form of a rigid, intolerant grandfather who placed so much importance on Brahmin pride and upholding the Cabot name that he’d sacrifice anyone and anything on the altar of them, even his own children and grandchildren.  
  
At that Ben laughed. “That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago, Mary love. Now come to bed. I like to have a woman warming _me_ between the sheets.”  
  
“A woman?” Mary raised her eyebrows in mock indignation.  
  
Ben got up, took the hair brush from her unresisting hand and set it aside. “A very particular woman, with eyes blue as the summer sky and the voice of an angel.” Then he scooped her up and carried her to their bed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aunt Mary and Elijah make the long-awaited trip into Calgary.

By the time Elijah and Aunt Mary finally made the journey to Calgary, over two weeks had passed since the Chinook. First one thing then another had put the trip off even though the flooding had subsided. But finally one sunny April morning they set out on the six-hour journey. The men gathered round to see them off, and as Elijah settled into place beside Aunt Mary on the wooden bench, Jesse winked at him and said, “Don’t go doing anything I wouldn’t, Elijah.”

Fortunately Uncle Ben and Aunt Mary were exchanging a farewell kiss, so they missed Elijah’s blush. Jesse didn't, though, and Elijah wished his fair skin didn't redden so easily. The young ranch hand had given Elijah an approving once-over at breakfast when he saw him dressed in his city clothes for the journey. His interest was becoming less subtle, and it flustered Elijah. He was unused to the attention and not at all sure he wanted it, even if it was flattering.

If it felt strange, indeed uncomfortable, to be wearing his old clothes again, it was even stranger to see Aunt Mary wearing a smart tailored suit of green plaid tweed. The tight-fitting jacket was cinched at the waist with a leather belt and draped over the bell-like skirt to hip level. A matching tweed cap completed her ensemble.

Since Elijah had arrived at the ranch, he’d never seen his aunt wearing anything but denim jeans. His astonishment when he came into the kitchen and saw her surpassed what he'd felt when he first saw her in pants. She'd laughed at the look on his face and said teasingly, "You'll catch flies, Elijah." He'd blushed and snapped his mouth shut, but then said sincerely, "You look beautiful, Aunt Mary," so that she was the one blushing.

The buck wagon, pulled by a pair of sturdy chestnut draft horses, was not particularly comfortable, but Elijah was fitter than he had ever been in his life, and Aunt Mary was solicitous of his comfort in understated ways that didn’t make him feel like an invalid, but only well-loved. And Uncle Ben saying to him right before they set off, "You take good care of your aunt now, Elijah," and seeming to believe that he could, didn't hurt either.

Elijah was consumed with curiosity to see everything he’d missed on the journey from the train station, and he looked eagerly around him as they drove away from the ranch and into areas new to him. Spring was arriving in earnest, and everywhere signs of new life were visible, in the green grass and early blooming wildflowers, in the innumerable cows with new-born calves by their sides, and in a pair of white-spotted elk calves they spied playfully chasing each other across a meadow.

As always when he was in his aunt's company, the hours flew by, and it seemed no time at all before they were driving into Calgary. It was a measure of how accustomed Elijah had already become to life at the ranch that the hustle and bustle of the city, even if minor compared to Boston, struck him forcibly. So many horses and carriages, so many people, so many buildings.

That Aunt Mary welcomed the change of pace was evident. Her face was all lit up and her eyes sparkled as she turned the horses down Stephen Avenue, which looked to be the busiest thoroughfare in the city. It was lined with yellow sandstone buildings and yet more were under construction, and the impression Elijah got was of a hive of bees busily and industriously at work.

"That's our hotel, the Alberta," she said, nodding toward a handsome three-story building that stood just ahead on their right. With its decorative façade and arched windows and doorways, it would not have looked out of place in Boston, Elijah decided. She pulled the horses up by the entrance and immediately two uniformed porters rushed out to meet them. But keeping in mind his uncle's abjuration, Elijah jumped down and hurried around to the other side to assist Aunt Mary from the carriage. He offered her his arm, and they went together into the crowded lobby while one porter led the horses away to the livery stable and the other followed them with their bags.  
  
The manager of the Alberta, a dapper little man by the name of Perley, met them in the lobby. He greeted Aunt Mary like an old friend, and Elijah with courteous interest. In fact, more than courteous, as it turned out, to Elijah’s embarrassment.

“Folks,” he announced to all and sundry in a carrying voice, “this here is Elijah Wood, Mary Kelly’s nephew from Boston. Come and give him a proper Calgary hello.”

That was all it took for every man, woman and child within earshot to come over and introduce themselves to Elijah. It was more than a little overwhelming to one accustomed to remaining squarely in the background, but he did his best to stay composed and not stammer or blush. It seemed that visitors from the east coast were a rare and wonderful thing, and two or three of the young ladies eyed him in an admiring manner that recalled to his mind what Aunt Mary had written in her first letter to him: _I expect you’ll turn some heads here. So best be prepared._ He’d assumed she was joking. Pale, undersized and sickly Elijah Wood, turn heads? Well, it seemed he’d been mistaken.

“Will we see you at the Opera House tonight, Elijah?” asked one of the girls, a buxom brunette named Abigail Burns. She slipped her arm through his, and batted her eyelashes at him. “Please say you’ll come. It’s _The Mikado_.”

“I don’t think...” he began, panic setting in as he wondered how to free himself from her grip without appearing unconscionably rude.

“You’ll see us there, Abby,” said Aunt Mary, who obviously knew the girl. “But in the meantime, Elijah and I still have to check into our rooms and then do some shopping.” With seemingly effortless ease, she detached Abigail’s arm from Elijah’s and gave it a pat. “Until tonight.” She spoke in the same brook-no-nonsense tone she’d use with Josephine, Yum-Yum, Mabel, Iolanthe and Patience at milking time if they were recalcitrant, and Abigail and the rest of the crowd proved as compliant as the cows and dispersed.

Abigail cast Elijah a final flirtatious glance over her shoulder, but Elijah was too distracted by what Aunt Mary had said to be flustered. “Are we really going to see _The Mikado_?” he asked eagerly.

“We are,” replied Aunt Mary, smiling. “I thought it would be a nice surprise for you.”

“It is,” Elijah said with enthusiasm then added wryly, “Although I’m not too keen on seeing Abigail again.” He went on in low, heartfelt tones, “Thank you for rescuing me.”

She squeezed his hand but had no time to reply, for Mr. Perley said, “If you’ll step this way, Mrs. Kelly, Mr. Wood.”

Mr. Perley himself assisted them at the check-in counter, waving away the desk clerk. After signing his name in the register, Elijah took six dollars from his billfold and handed them to the hotel manager. With some trepidation, for he wasn’t used to setting his foot down about anything, Elijah had broached the matter of paying for the hotel with his aunt and uncle the night before. It only seemed right that he do so since the trip was being made in especial for him, and he had plenty of money; indeed his father had set up an account for him at the Imperial Bank of Canada that held more than he could possibly need. Thankfully, neither Uncle Ben nor Aunt Mary had put up a fuss. He wasn’t at all certain how long his resolution would have held out.

As the rooms for men and women were on different floors, he and Aunt Mary went their separate ways after arranging to meet in the lobby in half an hour’s time.

Elijah’s room was small but very comfortably furnished and it had a window that overlooked the street. After unpacking his belongings and hanging up his good suit, he went to the window and pulled back the curtain so he could watch the activity below. His heart gave a leap when he saw several Mounties on horseback riding up the street, but as they were wearing white helmets rather than wide-brimmed Stetsons, Elijah could easily discern their faces and none of them was Sean. He sighed with disappointment and let the brown velvet fall back into place. There was no point in moping, he thought. It was nearly time to go downstairs anyway.

Glanville’s Dry Goods Store was but a short walk from the hotel, and there to his delight Elijah found everything he needed to be outfitted at last in proper sized cowboy clothes, from a tan Stetson to brown tooled leather boots, silver spurs, and everything in between. While a store clerk assisted Elijah, Aunt Mary pulled out a lengthy shopping list of items she needed such as flour and sugar and so they were kept happily occupied for quite some time. Mr. Glanville promised to have everything ready for them to load into the wagon on the morrow, and with that assurance, they took their leave. Much as Elijah would have liked to don his new clothes, denim and flannel weren’t appropriate for an evening at the opera. So, with definite regret, he left them behind when they departed the store.

By the time they returned to the Alberta, there was just enough time for Elijah to bathe, pomade his hair and put on his evening dress: wide black trousers, a white dress shirt with pearl buttons, and a black satin waistcoat, black silk hose and highly polished black boots with white spats. The high stiff white collar cut into his chin, and the black linen bow tie felt tight and restrictive after the casual dress he’d become accustomed to wearing. But the delights in store made it worth suffering the constraints of fashion for one evening, he decided.

Last of all Elijah donned a black frock coat, pulled on his white kidskin gloves and retrieved his silk top hat, tucking it under his arm. He took one final look in the mirror and hesitated, studying his reflection. A different Elijah looked back at him than the one he was used to seeing: less pale and wan than in the past. How he wished that Sean could see him now, Elijah thought wistfully. He’d made such a dreadful first impression at the railway station. With a sigh, he turned away.

If it had been a shock to see Aunt Mary in a dress, Elijah did an absolute double-take when he saw her in evening dress. She looked the height of elegance in a gown of dark blue spangled with silver, pale gray mousquetaire gloves and her hair upswept into a fashionable pompadour accented with a matching blue and silver plume. It struck Elijah forcibly what his aunt had given up to marry Uncle Ben: a life of luxury and ease and, even more, a world of privilege through which she had moved seamlessly, as only one born to it could. It was clear she had no regrets about her choice; her love for Uncle Ben shone through her every look when they were together and in her voice when she spoke of him. But Elijah could understand why her eyes had lit up as they drove into town. This, too, was still her world, if only in a small measure now.

“Well, don’t you look fine, Elijah,” Aunt Mary said when she saw him. “Very distinguished.”

Distinguished? No one had ever called him that before. Elijah held his head a little higher as he offered Aunt Mary his arm and escorted her into the hotel dining room.

The Alberta was renowned for the excellence of its food, and it more than lived up to its reputation. The croquettes of fowl with parsley sauce, the baked salmon, and the tipsy trifle cake for dessert were all delicious and Elijah ate with a heartiness that he’d rarely ever displayed at home in Boston. He was glad they decided to walk to the Opera House rather than hire a cabbie. The restaurant had been stuffy, wreathed in postprandial pipe and cigar smoke, and his stomach wasn’t particularly happy with how much it had been asked to hold. The air felt cool and decidedly refreshing.

Overhead the sky was starlit with the moon only a sliver of silver, but golden light poured from the windows of Hull’s Opera House. A large crowd of people thronged around the entrance and the road was choked with carriages and even a couple of what Uncle Ben called ‘those newfangled automobiles.’ Aunt Mary appeared to be known to most everyone in Calgary, or so it seemed to Elijah, whose head reeled from the number of people he was introduced to, from the Mayor, Mr. Emerson, to Mr. Hull, who had built the Opera House.

As if she had been lying in wait for him, no sooner had Elijah checked his hat and set foot inside the theater lobby, resplendent with enough crystal, mirrors and gilt to rival the fanciest theater in Boston, than Abigail Burns appeared. With her was an older man who had the tanned and lined face of one who lived his life out-of-doors. His evening dress sat uncomfortably on him as if it knew it didn’t belong there.

“ _There_ you are,” Abigail said to Elijah, as if he should have been expecting her - which perhaps he should have. “I thought we’d never find you in all this crowd.”

Which Elijah suspected was a rather large fib, but he only said a polite good evening, and privately wished that his aunt wasn’t several yards away, deep in conversation with Mr. Hull. It seemed he was on his own, and that was as frightening a prospect as anything he’d been faced with since leaving home. Abigail exuded a boundless confidence that he suspected could knock aside any obstacle between her and what she wanted. And what she appeared to want was Elijah.

“Elijah, this is my father, James Burns,” she went on. “Daddy, this is Elijah Wood, Mary Kelly’s nephew from Boston.” She said the word ‘Boston’ as if it were one of the fabled places Mr. Rider Haggard wrote about in his novels.

“How do you do, sir?” Elijah held out his hand. It was taken in a crushing grip. He refused to wince, however, suspecting that James Burns was testing him. Exactly _why_ he was being tested didn’t bear thinking on.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Mr. Burns replied in gruff voice, finally releasing Elijah’s hand. It ached abominably, but Elijah staunchly ignored the pain and kept a smile pinned to his face.

“I’ve been telling Daddy about you, Elijah,” Abigail said brightly. “You’ve no idea how I _yearn_ to visit a real city like Boston. I declare, I’m positively _green_ with envy anytime I meet someone who comes from back east. You’ll have to tell me _all_ about it.”

“Well,” Elijah said, but Abigail swept on without waiting for an answer.

“In fact, it’s my dream to marry and move east,” she added with a meaningful look.

“Oh?” said Elijah politely. A trickle of sweat ran down the back of his neck.

“Yes. Isn’t it that right, Daddy?”

Mr. Burns mumbled something inaudible. Clearly he was even less comfortable in social situations than Elijah was, which was saying something, or maybe he was embarrassed by his daughter’s less than subtle overtures. Elijah could only hope so.

“When I was younger,” Abigail went on, assuming an air of maturity that sat oddly on a face that still held traces of childish fullness, “I fancied marrying a Mountie, they look so _perishingly_ handsome in those red coats, but I want more than cows and chickens and typhus for company when my husband isn’t home.”

Something passed through Abigail’s eyes then; it was the first glimpse of honest emotion he’d detected, but it wasn’t a pleasant emotion, rather something dark, like a horror remembered. Elijah felt a stirring of sympathy. He wondered at the absence of a Mrs. Burns, and if it was somehow related to that darkness.

Just then the lights in the lobby dimmed, signaling that the performance was about to begin. Elijah was relieved. He might feel sympathy for Abigail Burns, but he didn’t want to be roped and hogtied by her either. He suspected she was well up to the task.

“If you’ll excuse me, Abigail, Mr. Burns, I’d best find my aunt so we can take our seats,” Elijah said with a polite half-bow.

Abigail put a white-gloved hand on his sleeve to stay him. “We’ll be having a barn dance next month, Elijah,” she said. “On the twenty-first. Please say you’ll come.” She turned to her father. “Daddy, tell Elijah that you absolutely insist on him attending our dance.”

Elijah took pity on poor, uncomfortable Mr. Burns, who was clearly out of his element. “That’s not necessary, sir. I’d be delighted to attend.” Abigail let out a little squeal of delight and made to hug his arm to her again. Elijah adroitly evaded her as the lights dimmed again. “I expect we should all find our seats now. I hope you enjoy the performance, Abigail, sir.” Then he made good his escape - and it felt very much like an escape.

He said nothing to Aunt Mary about Abigail or the invitation to the barn dance. Sufficient unto the day, he decided as he settled into a red velvet seat a few rows from the front and listened to the orchestra tuning their instruments. And then the curtain rose and he was simply swept away as on some flying carpet by the magic of Gilbert and Sullivan. The performance was splendid, and Elijah enjoyed it all the more because from time to time he and Aunt Mary would look at each other and grin like conspirators with a secret to share.

At the intermission, as Elijah was keeping a weather eye out for Abigail, a voice said, "Mary Kelly, by all that's wonderful!"

Elijah turned to see a Mountie threading his way across the lobby toward them. He was tall and lanky, with a black handlebar mustache that almost rivaled Uncle Ben's.

"Samuel!" Aunt Mary said with delight. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Nor I you, Mary," he replied. "What brings you into Calgary? Is Ben with you?"

"I'm here to shop," she said, "and you know Ben would rather swim the Bow River with his hands tied than accompany me on a shopping expedition." She turned to Elijah. "Elijah, this is Sergeant Samuel Carter, a dear friend. Sam, this is my nephew Elijah Wood. He's visiting us from Boston for the summer."

"How do you do, Sergeant Carter?" Elijah said, offering his hand.

"Sam will do just fine," the Mountie said, taking his hand and giving it a friendly shake. "And I’ve heard your name before, from Sean.”

Elijah’s heart jumped straight into his throat. Sean had mentioned him? What had he said? Hopefully nothing too uncomplimentary even though Elijah had fainted like a girl. But he could detect no disdain in Sam Carter’s words or look.

Aunt Mary said, “We’ve not had any word from Sean since he left us three weeks ago. When did you last see him? We’re anxious for news.” Elijah wondered if it was his imagination that her eyes flickered briefly in his direction.

“And I wish I could provide you with some, Mary, but unfortunately, the last time I saw Sean was only a day or two after he left you. He’ll be away up north in the Yukon, I expect. That’s where Scully will likely have gone to ground.”

Useless to deny it was a disappointment - a crushing one. Elijah’s imagination had foolishly and sentimentally painted a scene of Sean riding triumphantly into town tomorrow morning with Scully tied up and slung over a pack horse like a sack of potatoes. He’d glimpse an admiring Elijah standing by the side of the road and a joyful smile would overspread his face. ‘Wait for me,’ he’d mouth, and after delivering Scully to the jail, Sean would ride back to the ranch with them...

“But I promise that if I hear any news, I’ll stop by the ranch and let you know,” Sam said.

“Thank you, Sam. We’d appreciate it,” Aunt Mary said.

The conversation veered in other directions after that, and Elijah gamely upheld his share of it, all the while a current of depression ran below the surface. The Yukon was vast, sparsely populated now that the Klondike gold rush was over, and many hundreds of miles distant from Calgary. It wasn’t fair that Elijah should have but one glimpse into Sean’s face before he was sent so far out of reach that it began to seem hopeless that they would ever meet again.

As he returned to his seat, Elijah chided himself for being self-centered and childish. Not fair? What wasn’t fair was what had been done to that poor woman by Scully. He’d best to remember that instead of feeling sorry for himself.

Later, on the way back to the hotel, Aunt Mary softly sang snatches of _The sun whose rays are all ablaze_ and she seemed more to float than walk, her entire being transported by the beauty of the performance they’d witnessed. It was, Elijah thought, a perfect end to the evening.

Next morning, the wagon laden with their purchases, they set out for the ranch. When the house at last came into view, the chestnuts whickering eagerly and leaning into their harnesses with renewed energy, anxious to reach their stable and the buckets of oats that would be waiting, warmth like a small fire kindled and burned in Elijah’s heart. Already it felt to him like coming home.

~*~

_Dear Father and Mother,_  
I hope this letter finds you both well, as I am. I’m happy to report that I grow stronger every day. The climate here agrees with me, just as Dr. Hill said it would. In fact, the fresh air makes me ravenously hungry, and I expect that by the time I return to Boston, I will no longer fit into any of my old clothes.  


Elijah paused, and sucked on the end of his pen as he considered what next to write. It was far more challenging than he’d imagined.

_It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for nearly six weeks now. The time has flown past and I am having a grand time. Aunt Mary and Uncle Ben are kindness itself and treat me as if I were their own son.  
_

He reconsidered and scratched out ‘and treat me as if I were their own son.’ It wouldn’t do, even if it was the truth, even if Boston and his life there seemed to belong to another world and time so thoroughly had he become enmeshed in the day to day doings of the ranch, fitting into this new life much as his cowboy boots, stiff and uncomfortable at first, were now broken in, the leather soft and supple.

  _You wouldn’t believe all the things I’m learning and how busy my days are. I help Aunt Mary with the chores each morning: milking the cows and feeding the hens and gathering their eggs. Why, I’m even learning how to cook.  
_

Elijah reconsidered and scratched the last sentence out. He could only imagine what his father would think of his son learning to cook. No manly art that. He’d be even more appalled to discover how very much Elijah was enjoying his cookery lessons and that it had, in fact, been entirely his idea.

He’d been hesitant to ask, not knowing if it were proper for a man to express interest in such a domestic pursuit, but Aunt Mary had greeted his tentative request with delight. His painful ineptitude hadn’t been source of scorn since, as she put it, “I didn’t even know how to boil water when I arrived here.” And gradually he was improving, learning his way around the kitchen to the point that he’d been allowed to prepare a few of the simpler dishes for dinner, and to his delight no one at the table had noticed the difference.

But he doubted his father would be equally delighted.

Still, there were other things he could write about that should please his father more.

_I’m becoming proficient at horseback riding, although my horse, Molly, still manages to unseat me sometimes. One of these days I’ll be able to stay on her back when she shies and then Uncle Ben will give me a proper cow pony to ride.  
_

Elijah scratched out the bit about Molly unseating him. Mother would be worried sick.

_I’m becoming proficient at horseback riding. My horse is named Molly. She’s black and white and has one brown eye and one blue.  
_

There. There was nothing objectionable in that.

_I’m learning how to ride herd on the cattle. Cows aren’t very bright but they’re stubborn all right. Getting one of them to leave the main herd and go where you want it to is harder than you’d think. Jesse says I have the makings of a real cowboy. But I expect he’s only saying that to flatter me.  
_

More scratching out. Bringing up Jesse wasn’t a good idea, either for his parents or for him. The truth was that thinking about him made Elijah’s stomach tie up in knots. It was getting harder and harder to ignore Jesse’s interest in him - the bold looks, the ‘accidental’ touches - but he didn’t know what to do about it. He wished he could talk to his aunt and uncle, but he was an adult now and he couldn’t go running to them for help every time something was wrong. Besides, Jesse was a hired hand and he didn’t want to get him into hot water.

_Of course, to be a proper cowboy you have to know how to use a lasso, and I’m afraid I’m not making very good progress at that. Seven times out ten I miss the fence post. I doubt I’ll ever be able to rope a running steer!  
_

Elijah paused, sucked on the end of his pen some more for inspiration, and then went on.

_But I am doing very well with my shooting lessons. Uncle Ben has given me a Winchester repeating rifle for my very own. I confess that I was apprehensive when he first set it in my hands, and the kickback and the noise took some getting used to, but he says that it’s as important for someone living on a ranch to know how to handle a gun as it is to know how to ride. And I’m truly enjoying the challenge. Uncle says I have the keen eye and natural aim of a born marksman. So far I’m only shooting at bottles on a fence rail and tin cans hung from ropes. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to shoot anything that’s living. But Uncle Ben says that while one should never take a life unnecessarily, if the time ever comes that I need to do so, I will. I’m not so certain, and to be truthful, I hope I never have to find out.  
_

Elijah sighed again and scratched out the last three sentences. Mother wouldn’t be at all happy to think of Elijah killing anything and Father would think poorly of him for being so squeamish and unmanly. Besides, it probably wasn’t wise to write ‘Uncle Ben says’ too many times, given the circumstances. He didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his stay here. All it would take was one telegram to Calgary and he’d be on the train back to Boston. He couldn’t bear it if that were to happen.

_Uncle Ben takes me fishing for rainbow trout in the afternoons - whenever he can spare the time, that is. He has a great passion for fishing. I can’t quite understand why, though I enjoy it well enough. Sometimes Pat, one of the ranch hands, goes with us. He makes his own fishing flies and you’ve never seen anything so cunning! Why, they look more real than the real thing. The fish certainly think they’re real. He catches twice as many trout as Uncle Ben and three times as many as I do. It drives Uncle Ben plumb crazy.  
_

Elijah grinned involuntarily, recalling his uncle’s good-natured grumbling as Pat reeled in yet another trout. “You might leave some for the rest of us, Pat,” he’d say, but Pat would just chuckle and keep on reeling.

The grin quickly faded. The things he wanted to write next simply couldn’t be expressed in a letter to his father. If he was writing to his mother alone, he could tell her how much he enjoyed those quiet hours by the river, where little was said - which suited Elijah just fine. He could tell her that while he was fishing, his imagination was free to roam as it liked, the way it used to do at bedtime, before the busy days on the ranch left him so bone-tired that he was asleep most nights the instant his head hit the pillow. Mother understood, as Father did not and never could, how important the life of the imagination was for Elijah.

He could tell her how peaceful it was to sit on the steep grassy bank with his fishing pole in hand, watching the lazy ripples and eddies in the sheltered pool where the trout liked to hide, and describe for her how the sunset turned the water to flame then gradually darkened as dusk fell. He could tell her how it felt to ride home in perfect contentment under the newly awakened stars, listening to the frogs and crickets sing and the occasional far-off yip of a coyote.

_The only bad part about trout fishing is having to clean the fish I catch,_ he wrote instead. _But ‘you catch ‘em, you clean ‘em’ is the rule here. I don’t mind, though. It may seem odd, but knowing that I’ve contributed my share to our dinner makes Aunt Mary’s fried trout taste even better.  
_

He sat lost in thought, staring into the fire and tapping the pen absently against his pursed lips. What else could he safely write about? He knew what he wanted to say, and though it could never be sent, he wrote it anyway.

_I grow ever closer to Aunt Mary, Mother, as you must have known I would. She is truly a kindred spirit. We talk almost constantly about books and music, and we sing together. Her voice... oh Mother, when she sings I feel exactly as I do when I listen to you play: transported out of myself and into a world of perfect beauty. How I wish that I could listen to you making music together as you once did. Aunt Mary has told me many stories about the two of you, and hearing them brings me closer to you; I miss you so very much. But it saddens me more than I can say that I never knew her until now. How have you borne the years of separation when you were so close? Is there truly no hope of a reconciliation? Nothing would make Aunt Mary happier than to be reunited with you. She loves you most dearly.  
_

A sudden mist of tears obscured his vision. Elijah blinked them away and went on.

_One of the stories Aunt Mary told me was of the night you snuck out to the vaudeville house and she met Uncle Ben. She told me how they looked into each other’s eyes and at once fell in love. Mother, I think the same thing may have happened to me. He’s a Sergeant with the Royal North West Mounted Police. I’ve only met him once, the day I arrived here, and then for only a few brief moments - but it was enough. I long to meet him again, while at the same time I tremble inside with apprehension lest my feelings prove to be one-sided. Would you like to know his name? It’s Sean.  
_

Elijah lifted pen from paper. He stared down at Sean’s name, at his secret heart revealed, if only for his eyes to read. Daringly, almost defiantly, he wrote again: _It’s Sean_. Then quickly, as if the letter might somehow escape from him and wing its way to Boston, he crumpled the paper and threw it on the fire, watched as the greedy flames licked along the edges, scorching and curling them until the paper burst into flame.

When it was entirely consumed, reduced to gray ash, he pulled another sheet of writing paper toward him and started over again, penned the careful and unrevealing letter that would be safe for both his parents to read.  
  


~*~  
  


Later, Elijah wondered if he hadn’t somehow cursed himself by telling his parents how improved his health was. For two days later rainclouds started massing on the horizon and the air turned humid, and by nightfall a steady rain was falling.

He woke in the predawn hours struggling for breath, while pains sharp as a trout knife's blade stabbed him. Foolishly, he’d slept with the window open, and the damp had settled into his lungs, inflaming them. Elijah nearly cried, not from the considerable pain, but from frustration. He’d treasured a growing certainty that at last he’d put the worst of the illness behind him. To discover he’d been wrong after all was a bitter pill to swallow.

When the wake-up bell started to clang, Elijah didn’t scramble eagerly from his bed, but only lay there, breathing so shallowly that it made him light-headed.

Eventually Aunt Mary came looking for him. “Elijah? It’s time to get up, sweetheart,” she said, knocking softly at the door.

But Elijah couldn’t even summon breath enough to answer her.

“Elijah?” she asked again, and this time Elijah managed to gasp, “C-can’t. Pl-pl-pleurisy.”

She was at his side almost before he’d finished getting the words out. “Let’s sit you up,” she said in a brisk voice, sliding an arm behind him and raising him. She piled up the pillows at his back then went to the window and closed it, shutting out the rain-washed air. Elijah saw her shoulders lift and settle before she turned back to him with a determinedly cheerful smile. But in her eyes he saw the concern she wouldn’t express aloud.

“Fortunately Sis sent me instructions for what to do when you have an attack. We’ll have you fixed and right as rain in no time.”

“N-not rain, p-please,” Elijah joked. “M-makes it w-worse.”

Tears flooded her eyes. “Oh hell,” she said. “I swore I wouldn’t weep over you like a willow tree, and now look at me.” She dabbed ferociously at the tears with the hem of her apron.

“You c-cussed,” Elijah pointed out.

That made her laugh, a shaky laugh. “So I did."

"I w-won't t-tell."

Aunt Mary swooped in and hugged him, a careful, tender hug, before leaving him to fetch the supplies she'd laid in for just such an eventuality. Her chest was tight with a knot of love and fear, and it was nearly as difficult for her to breath as it was for Elijah.

During the time he was bed-bound, Aunt Mary sat with him almost continuously, only leaving him to snatch a few hours' sleep, when Uncle Ben would relieve her. She had an uncanny knack for sensing what Elijah needed and when, whether it was more willow bark tea to ease the pain, a hot pack on his chest, or a supportive arm when a wracking, agonizing fit of coughing took him.

Uncle Ben moved her rocker into his bedroom, and while Elijah dozed, she rocked and knitted, the faint, rhythmic sound of the needles soothing somehow, and hummed or sang softly. Other times, when he felt up to it, she read aloud to him. The struggle to breath exhausted Elijah; he had energy for little more than keeping his tortured lungs going.

At times he grew feverish and fell into an uneasy doze and became mixed up in his mind as to where he was. "Mother?" he said once, thinking he smelled her perfume and longing for her soft, scented embrace, her voice saying his name, and the sound of her piano. "It's only me, Aunt Mary," his aunt replied, stroking his hair back from his forehead and setting a cool cloth on the burning skin. "No, not 'only'." Despite his fevered state, he couldn't allow her to think that. "Love you, Aunt Mary." He wondered if it was his imagination that a drop of warm wetness fell on his cheek as she said, "I love you, too, my dear, darling boy."

Another time, he tossed and turned and murmured Sean’s name. “Where is he? Why doesn’t he come?” he said in agitation. “He will, Elijah. I promise you, he will,” Aunt Mary soothed, over and over. Eventually he fell into a deep sleep, and when he awoke the memory of it had left him.

It was four days before the worst of the inflammation eased and Elijah was well enough to leave his bed. But in Boston, a pleurisy attack so severe would have laid him up for many more days, and that knowledge was the silver lining to the dark cloud of his illness. He _was_ getting stronger.

On the morning of the fifth day, when Elijah, still shaky but determined, appeared in the kitchen for breakfast, the open and honest delight with which he was greeted by everyone present, right down to Lucy, Tess, Blue and Honey, was a greater boost to his spirits than anything else could have been. His worry that the men would think the less of him for his physical frailty was swiftly put to rest. Jesse pulled out Elijah’s chair for him with an exaggerated flourish that made everyone laugh, and there was very much a celebratory feeling in the air.

After breakfast Elijah returned to his room to rest, and slept deeply until early afternoon. He woke feeling nearly as good as new, with only a lingering hitch to his breathing that was easily ignored. He found Aunt Mary in the kitchen, and she wasted no words but sat him straight down and put a steaming bowl of chicken soup and a spoon in front of him.

“Eat up,” she ordered, and he didn’t need telling twice. He was famished enough to have seconds and devour half a dozen biscuits dripping with butter.

When Elijah was finished, he rose from the table and set his empty bowl in the sink. “Aunt Mary,” he said.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

She was busy rolling out pie dough, but Elijah went to her and put his arms around her waist and hugged her. “Thank you,” he said, and he didn’t have to explain why.

She set aside the rolling pin and hugged him back. “You’ve already given me the only thanks I need, Elijah, and that’s to see you up and yourself again.” She gave him a smacking kiss on the forehead and said, “Now, how about you help me put together these apple pies?”

The pies were assembled and in the oven when Uncle Ben appeared in the kitchen door and said, “Plan on frying up trout for supper, Mary my love.” He had his fishing rod in one hand and the canvas bag that held his tackle slung over his shoulder. “They’ll be biting for certain, I’m thinking, now the rain’s gone.”

“Can I go with you, Uncle?” Elijah asked.

His uncle scrutinized him for a few moments then nodded. “All right. Fetch your gear and meet me at the barn.”

“Thanks! I won’t keep you waiting long, I promise.” Elijah flew to Aunt Mary, pecked her on the cheek and was gone.

“Our lad’s feeling better, it seems,” Ben said.

“Yes, I do believe he is,” Mary replied, and in the profoundly relieved smile they exchanged everything else that needed saying was said.  
  


~*~  
  


The rainy weather had yielded to flawless blue skies and a light breeze from the south. The sun was warm on Elijah’s back as he rode Molly at an easy jog behind Uncle Ben on his bay gelding Seamus along the familiar trail winding through the coulee.

When he heard a loud ‘Halloo’, Elijah, startled, reined Molly to a halt and looked around him for the source of the call. And when he found it, he stared in wonderment. Silhouetted against the deep blue sky at the crest of the hill on his left were a horse and rider - and even at this distance, Elijah could see the the distinctive red jacket the rider wore. His heart leaped straight into his throat and lodged there.

_It’s probably that Sergeant Carter or some other Mountie,_ Elijah cautioned himself. _Don’t go getting your hopes up.  
_

‘Halloo,’ the man shouted again, removing his Stetson and waving it to get their attention. Then he clapped his hat back on his head and set out at a flat gallop down the hill toward them, horse and rider moving as one.

“Well, I’ll be blessed,” exclaimed Uncle Ben. “I’d recognize that seat on a horse anywhere. It’s Sean.”

The completely expected happened next. Elijah, too thoroughly distracted by the longed-for news to pay the slightest attention to anything but the approaching horse and rider, gave Molly the perfect opening, and she shied violently.

And then the completely _un_ expected happened. Instead of pitching off as she ducked her shoulder and wheeled on her haunches, Elijah stuck to the saddle like glue. It was difficult to say who was more startled by this development: Elijah or Molly.

“I stayed on. Uncle Ben, I stayed _on_ ,” Elijah said, sounding dazed.

Uncle Ben threw back his head and laughed aloud. “So you did. It seems today is a day for miracles, Elijah.”

“Yes.” But Elijah spoke absently, for his attention had returned to the red-coated Mountie galloping towards them, and could he but have known it, all his heart was in his eyes.


End file.
